


rising as bruises, as ravenous ghosts

by flesh_and_bone_telephone



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, I mean don't get me wrong, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Littlefinger needs to die a slow and torturous death and i hate him, Pretty much AU after Jon and Sansa retake Winterfell, Show Canon blended with elements of Book Canon, also I know people hate on Littlefinger like he's some sort of cartoon villain, but I hope to do this magnificent villain justice where I can, but damn does that bitch have style, but i know myself better, i guess, i'd say 'the slowest burn to ever burn', in that the drama is more North focused and Jon has to contest with Northern lords a lot, so 'slow burn' with alarming spikes of lightning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-19 12:53:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 64,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7362235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flesh_and_bone_telephone/pseuds/flesh_and_bone_telephone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"My lord," Sansa begins prettily, courtesies ready on her tongue like stones skipping across a lake. He knows her anger like a slap in the face.</p><p>And he looks wild, like a man, like the beastly body that had just barely dragged itself off Ramsay Bolton before it could steal him from her. Like the greatest injury she could do him was to call him her King. His throat works,  "<i>Don't.</i>"</p><p>She has no choice but to keep facing him, his gloved fingers a strong curl around her elbows, the snow spreads into her skin in icy bite where he holds her. She faces him, lips pressed, gaze cool.</p><p>"Your Grace, then -"</p><p>"Jon," he swears, making a hard infuriated noise. Desperate and angry. His face pale in the muted light of the god's wood twists with his hurt. Young, snow caught on his lashes and the eyes always so dark as to often be mistaken for black they flash like the underbelly of storm clouds caught on lightning. Grey.</p><p>His throat works the words so hoarse they can only rush the blood in her ears. "Only Jon."</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p>Jon Snow is King in the North and Sansa Stark attempts once more to be what she must.</p><p>Note: title from Bryan Penberth's “The End of Free Love"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Reminder and Apology that if this fic looks familiar it's because the first few chapters are a rewrite, with the addition of the recent most chapters I can now confirm that we will be continuing on with new drama for the following chapters. Thank you and bless all of you who have commented and been so lovely.

Full speed ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm blown away by the feedback this fic has gotten, honestly thank you so much!


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

_"You can carry a knife and still trust everyone."_

 

\- Church of the Broken Axe Handle, Derrick Brown

 

 

* * *

 

  

The branches are red bristled, they stretch upward and outward and great, hovering over her head with the brittle suspension of a glass tree. Once she might have called the wood around it vast.

Sansa perches on one of the roots of the heart tree as her father might have once done. She sits and has no sword to sharpen and no longer faith to pray.

The old gods and the Seven are no different to one another in their eternal silence.

She is so cold, the breath plumes in front of her as if it means to tell her that she is a living thing but she is so cold. On the ramparts Jon kisses the crown of her. She has seen how blood steams on snow, she has been bloodied enough to know. On the ramparts Jon had kissed her sweet, like the last thing her father did before they took him, like the doll he gave her. She had told him she was too old for it and set it aside, hating him for taking her away from Joffrey. _They took him away because of her._

Not a year ago her hair had been darkened with dye and Petyr had kissed her as Jon kisses her now, had promised to protect her as Jon does now. Petyr gave her to the Boltons, Jon was too ready to die when Rickon fell.

Jon kisses her with his eyes closed, his mouth pressing sweet and tender in his warning and his forgiveness. Sansa is so cold.

Trust, his kiss, the doll.

There are so many things now that she is too old for.

 

* * *

 

**-**

 

 

The hall booms and Sansa watches with the belated, stunted horror of one paralyzed in the path of a great landslide. The tectonic shift, mountains are falling, on her, through her. The Northerners are are on their feet, her heart stopping at the sight of bared steel. It is Glover bright-eyed and thrusting at the air with his sword. He is then nothing like the man who called the Stark cause non-existent when they'd come like beggars for what should have been due to them by oath.

She must be mistaken _surely_ –  she hears that word 'King' again and again and each call lances through her one after the other, dragging out tangled entrails as it leaves her – Sansa is empty, her face falling back into agonized stillness. Transparent, she thinks, in its neutrality, in its lack of expression.

It erupts, unfolds, it's the blood in her ears roaring. For a moment she'd thought... the smug amusement at hearing these grave, ever surly men being dressed down by a young girl with more steel in her than every forge in Westeros. That after all this time Robb’s name still _meant_ something. The expectation though, knifed through – _I don't care if he's a bastard!_

Jon.

They mean _Jon._

She had begun her campaign knowing her place, that it would be Jon they could rally beneath and thusly she had fashioned him her superior. _He_ had the army. A military commander, they would see his grim mouth and the skill of his sword and take as much heart in him as they had Ned Stark if not more.

He was her father’s son and had that betwixt his legs which best made men heirs and women hostages. Being anywhere near sovereign had been a terrible thing for Sansa in the past. Princess, Queen-in-training…she had had her fill of the crown and it had made her ill. She understood wise words and careful ploys, how when one must lead it could be from behind the throne rather than on it. In Jon’s shadow she could protect them both. He would be lord of Winterfell, rightly so and she could be Sansa, a step further from that claim that had done nothing but damn and endanger her for the entirety of her life.

_What did you imagine? That you might return to Winterfell, live as you did when you were but a girl while Jon played father? You put a man in front of you, to shield you, will you now call it an act of sisterly love?_

She knew she could not properly think to have any claim, she did not represent what these Northerners wanted but it did not mean she was immune to the sting of being passed over, ever discounted. He was a leader of men and as with Ser Seaworth, had the same gruff manner about his speech, an honesty that compelled loyalty and love. That let him lead men over the wall to fight for him.

Sansa could only begin with flattery, ill equipped for Lyanna Mormont's scathing rebuffal. She was called Bolton, Lannister, the knocks between her spine rigid and brittle. The courtesies plied against Southerners were not so easily applied to Mormonts.

She only wanted to take back their home. She'd meant the lord's rooms for Jon because she had called him a Stark, her brother. An elder brother by rights who would succeed Robb and come before her in claim. She had meant him to be the lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North, as father had been – she had wanted a little to make things right for Jon. _Liar, you wanted to protect yourself._

But Lyanna Mormont shouts 'King', the yell goes through Sansa with a word that is knives. There had been no need, no _need_. They should have let those titles die with Robb, they were what had killed him.

It could not be helped for by declaring for House Stark Lord Baelish had launched them back into the great game. They were players whether they wanted it or no. Lord Baeilish had never needed her consent to move her though he pretended its importance.

The Northmen seemed to have forgotten what happened to Stark Kings and their bannermen, _don't they know the eyes that this will bring_? _That this is the sort of thing that requires a certain kind of answer? Has it not killed enough men?_

They should not be turning to these matters. Winterfell was well-stocked as of now as Ramsay had been preparing for a siege but what of later? Their stores could not feed the entirety of the North. The glass gardens had been decimated by the iron-born, winter was upon them and they had no hope of growing anything if they did not send for materials from Dorne or wherever else they could be had. Should arrangements be so they would have an entire host of men in their midst, their granaries were meagre in light of this.

If they had any hope of protecting the rest of the North they needed to send out ravens, messengers, inform surrounding settlements that they could make for Winterfell or whichever Northern house lay nearest to be better protected against the wights Jon spoke of. There were old wounds to be settled that would fester otherwise, injustices between and within the Northern houses which had turned on each other during the Bolton's reign, the bloody business pressed on her keenly. As keenly as if Ramsay was in her again.

Littlefinger would make himself indispensable, she was not sure of how but she was sure of it. They needed this dragon glass as Jon had called it, he had told her that Stannis Baratheon had had mines of it in the Stormlands. Did they hope to access such now when they had invited the South to hinder them?

Petyr had painted a larger target on their backs. They needed to coordinate their defences to cover their rear should Southron armies invade as they had done in the Riverlands, naming Jon King would prompt them now, it was a provocation that would certainly be answered.

King in the North!

The King in the North!

Jon Snow, the King in the North!

_In the same breath that they swear to fight beasts and monsters beyond the realm of men, they further complicate matters by plunging the North back into what it has barely survived!_

Men fall to their knees, their points of their blades striking the stone. Her eyes flicker up in surprise then to him. Lyanna stands on her bench in her hard boots, bristled in her thick furs she looks like a commander, a warrior and not yet even flowered – arms folded behind her back, standing tall as those who cry their fealty – but it is Jon who worries Sansa. His body is hard and stiff in its shock, watching the young lady as if she had spoken in tongues. Jangle of boots and tables shuddering beneath fists. _Of course,_ is the first thought and she's barely through with that bitter halt of anger before her heart seizes. They're _all_ kneeling.

Jon looks like he's been stabbed, looks so abruptly young, rooted and clinging to his stillness as the world swims around him.

The Northern lords were clamouring, they seemed to her nothing but fools at a tourney debasing themselves as publicly as they can as if she could forget how very dishonest they have been. Jon forgives, Jon says there is _nothing to forgive._

It was the correct and Kingly answer. They have need of these men but Jon - _that does not mean we trust them so readily._

They shout his name, Lord Snow! The King in the North! Lord Baelish watched with the silky stare of a cat, his study met hers. Either he had severely underestimated the Northern lords and their willingness to overlook Jon's birth or he had calculated it exactly to sow discord. It would not be the first time he lied to her about an outcome.

He did not maintain the pleasant, affable smile he kept around him in King's Landing or in the Vale. He seemed to her curiously cold, perhaps she had hurt him. _Look at what Jon Snow earns freely what you have bled to buy._

He looked dangerous, watching intently and not hiding it as well as he could.

That would matter if anyone had the sense to watch him closely.

They sang Jon's praises and she sat by his side as quietly as lady Catelyn would have by her husband, counsel to be given later. There was no mention of what she had done. She brought the Vale only because she brought Littlefinger and only a fool could pretend his actions unasking charity.

Jon’s startlement has eased, he gives forgiveness kindly. His smile is kind.

 _It is right that it should be Jon._ He was good in a way few men were, managing to hold onto his kindness better than Sansa feared herself still capable. He stood clean and well in Northern garb, she had already set the household on bringing to her whatever could be salvage from the few of father's chests not looted by ironborn or Boltons and had already began work on whatever she could repair or improve. What a departure he made from the mud-slicked, war-heady beast he'd been with fists flying, his knuckles blackened, reddened, slickened with Ramsay's blood and hitting and hitting and hitting -

The part of her that had loved her mother and imitated her, that had called Jon her ‘bastard half-brother' when everyone else said 'brother' resurfaced, petty and petulant but that girl was at once crushed beneath a wave of guilt. It held her down. The shame and fear for that boy with his shoulders huddling every time Lady Catelyn's shadow passed over the courtyard. That boy who could have grown up hating her with a right to do so. He who could have grown twisted and ugly and cruel like Ramsay - but didn’t – wasn’t –  Jon _isn't_ Ramsay.

Ramsay was dead. _I killed him._

It had been insult piled upon injury when Ned's bastard had had his face. If Catelyn could have ever had any hope of forgetting her lord-husband’s infidelity it perished entirely when the resemblance proved so strong, so entirely a reminder. Jon was a constant reminder. He'd looked the most like their father but he'd been the most reviled. He had been the unwanted, the spare, sent to the Wall because he had blighted her mother's view for so long. Sansa had not even properly said goodbye to him that day so many years ago. He'd only been a child and already condemned to the black. She'd thought it strange that he had chosen it but had thought that it was only fitting too that Jon should want what would best put him out of the way. At least Uncle Benjen would be there to look after him. It was even noble for a bastard to make this choice. _They called them the Black knights of the North…_

To say it was his choice to go to the Wall was to presume that he had had any other left to him. What else could he have been? Only a bastard to be put away where he could no longer offend, where the greatest courtesy he could do them was to die. To never be seen or heard from again. It was neat, it was cruel. _Jon._ Her heart swells, there is a thorny ugliness in her throat that is ambled aside. He doesn't stand and savour the allegiance, he has never expected it. He looks shocked. Unmanned. He never…

Jon has always never been wanted, a bastard should never dream of the throne, of even being lord of Winterfell. He'd always known his place and never once wanted to stretch beyond it. It aches bitter sweet like her own blood in her mouth. Jon Snow, a King. How far he had come. How is it possible to be so tender towards him and yet still hate him? It is so foolish but he has not yet learnt, _none_ of them have _learnt._

Sansa, ever a student, smiles. She is in her home not as a hostage or a guest. She is in her home. They have won a battle and the Boltons are no more. Jon said they needed to trust each other and it is not his fault that men love him better than her, for he gave her father's rooms and had given her Ramsay even as he'd turned away from her with their brother's corpse on the cold cot between them, being carted off to the crypts.

He forgave her, though Sansa was stung by the idea for forgiveness suggests what she had done a crime. He had broken his promise when he'd rushed into the range of Ramsay's archers, he'd been ready to die and be killed. Yet it was she alone who must be forgiven.

But there is a Stark in Winterfell, a fighting man who will not hurt her. They are shouting his name, they are making him King. He never intended on being called that and she does smile at his surprise. Perhaps there is still something that can be salvaged from this, perhaps they might still survive? Jon's name is in oaths of fealty from the throats of the great lords who would have snubbed him his entire life. She is proud of how far he has come and how he reacts. _You have no right to be proud of Jon._ Self-appointed Kings rarely survive long. The North wants this. _Winter is here_. Her father's promise come to fruition. _The North remembers._ Jon's mouth cool on her brow, he means to do right. Jon belongs to this. Her brother deserves finally the acknowledgment from these men, even if it comes at the dismissal of their own for her.

Or Littlefinger.

He cannot be very happy with this unless…he has coordinated it, for the chaos it provokes excites him enough with its opportunity. She swallows thickly, avoids looking his way in lieu of observing the men. What foolishness of course, that she had told herself she could cut him from her so that he had no power over her again. He had confessed his plans to her. To Catelyn's pretty daughter with her red hair and her body broken by all she has been sold to all these years, how different could she be from one of his whores?

For all that he wanted her he had still used her in that manner. Perhaps a prized whore and a prized piece. She'd known he was planting a seed even as he planted it, telling herself she would not let anything he said take root in her ever again, and yet, _Who should the North rally behind? A trueborn daughter of Ned and Catelyn Stark, born here at Winterfell? Or a motherless bastard, born in the South?_

She had halted then, exhausted by her fear and by Littlefinger's ability to coax all worst from her that she had enough trouble burying on her own. He always had to have the last word, his parting truths always hooking into the meat of her. She had been afraid of his desire but like the same fool she'd been in the Vale she'd felt the power of it low in her belly, that she might even imagine she could have power over him for it.

Sansa had always been brutalized by the want of other men and had tried and failed to properly weaponize her beauty, had been brutalized by it instead. His seedlings... the roots of it brushed at her nape, the thin skeletal fingers curling into base of skull. His serpent's hiss, his ability to mock even with truth. She would curse him if she had enough time to think about him in the cacophony, why was there was never enough _time_ –

She had thought she had rebuffed him as she'd walked away from him, a victory short lived, mowed beneath the reminder that there would always be strife between her and Jon, that Petyr would make sure she knew it and that she would feel it always.

Why would he tell her he wanted her? Aunt Lysa had thought he loved her but he pushed her out of the moondoor. He had kissed her, perhaps an act of impulse or an excuse to kill her Aunt. Perhaps he had known that she would see. But what of the resulting chaos, killing Aunt Lysa had meant putting himself in a precarious position and endangering his own influence. Had he truly planned it? Had he a man of such control found in that moment so overwhelmed by her loveliness he’d cared not for the risk he was putting his meticulous plans at? He had emerged from the fracas on top either way. Impulse? Plotting? Who knew with him? He said he was her true friend, he said that he would protect her and he still sold her to the Boltons. He said he would die where he would stand if that was what she wanted but he had still come after the battle to assert himself, to interrupt prayers she could no longer make. He did not want her forgiveness, perhaps he did not even want her and only said that he did. Though the heat of his look had told her otherwise, had made the dreadful thing in the pit of her shiver and curl like an edge of paper caught in flame, turning in on itself. Eating itself. Why would he tell her he wanted her?

He told her his plans because he did not believe her capable of influencing them. He told her what he wanted because he did not think her capable of denying him, not for long anyway. These were not confessions of trust, he wanted to use her. Seduce her. He did not confide in her or confess anything to her, his was a promise like the promise of Winter, his schemes deciding all ends. She was not capable of outrunning it. It would come to fruition, whether she played in his interests or against them, even if she made no moves she would still be playing the game.

They did not credit Littlefinger who had made his want naked to her and been denied. She had insulted him and they add onto insult by choosing Jon. Littlefinger thwarted in his plans to make a pawn of her or a wife of her or whatever he meant to make of her because Northern Lords who can be counted on to be old and set in their ways have today decided to instead choose Jon Snow. The lords of the Vale cheer but their lord protector is not so pleased.

Sansa knows, sure as she knows that the moon will rise and the snow will fall that _if_ Petyr has been thwarted it is so temporary it renders itself irrelevant in the grand scheme. If it has thwarted him then it has done nothing but make him angry when he would have achieved his goals through his initial means. If this is not something he has in fact planned then he has barely been inconvenienced. He will reapply himself, adjust accordingly, this is nothing. This is _nothing._

He knew this would happen, he must have known. _Who do you think they should rally behind?_

He must have known. There’s no surprise in him, only cool consideration. He wanted her to want to lead, knowing that it could never be so. He wanted her to be disappointed, resentful  – what Mormont knight did his birds whisper to? Whose imaginations did he coax that would nurture the seed that Lady Lyanna already carried with her?

_The best trick, Alayne – to make anyone do anything is to make them think it was all their idea in the first place. They must feel clever in their own cunning, genius for their uniquely singular thinking, that revelation upon which no one else is wise enough to have arrived upon yet.  You must congratulate them on their excellent reasoning, their inspired plan of action and their exquisite taste._

Who in Lyanna’s circle had fallen prey to a pretty song and never think he had been led? The idea of Jon as King…was Lady Lyanna a complete innocent, a brash Northerner with the directness and spirit of her mother, carried away by her enthusiasm where sense would have otherwise kept someone older bound?  Or just as much a politician as any of the rest, quick to be the first to make a King, to assert her loyalties and to make that King indebted to her for her regard? Was she conspiring with any of the Houses? Did she truly love Jon or did she see the importance of uniting the North under a leader before whatever gains made during the battle could collapse? Was loving Jon and heeding strategy mutually exclusive? _You could still love a man and move him._

Perhaps that was what it was with Littlefinger. She used to think that Petyr and Littlefinger were two different people, mended together out of necessity – that at times he could be Petyr, her father, someone who cared for her, kisses or no – and other times he was Lord Baelish, a mask he had to wear, smiling down at her drunk Florian and motioning for the crossbow.

Beneath the heart tree he had perhaps been both. He was an efficient creature, duplicitious and brutally focused on his own ends  – terrible and more powerful than any King she’d thought to meet or bow to. He could still want her, he could still love her and sell her to Ramsay – and she would know even as she hated him that he wanted her to excel. He could lie to her but he still wanted to see her go far.

Only if she was his in the end, she understood now. _As long as I become his creature. His daughter, his wife, his whore, always his._

He wasn’t afraid of making her hate her brother for it. It seemed so foolish now to be angry with Jon. Who should they want with her Tully hair and her Southron look and not even a maidenhead left to her? Jon - it is Jon who has Eddard Stark's face, who they believed understood Winter better. What has Sansa been but a hostage, a victim? They do not know how one fights to remain a hostage instead of dead. They think there is skill in battle but see none in the disgraceful business of surviving the game of thrones this long.

They see a frail pretty thing. If she were Arya no one would think it. She wouldn’t have to prove she was a Stark, Arya would be fierce, a wolf whose blood, strength and loyalties would never once been doubted. Arya would know how to grin, how to be by Jon’s side with nothing but pure love in her heart. Perhaps Arya would have been Queen enough for them not to look to Jon.

Northerners chose who they thought worthy, it was not for Sansa to remind them of the rights of inheritance.

It is Jon. Jon who knows the cold better than they would ever think her capable, who has Ned Stark's graveness. Ned Stark lost his head and they sent his bones back, a courtesy as confusing as it is cursory after the cruelty of the execution. As if one could be mannered about the aftermath of so ugly a thing. _King in the North!_ Robb was King in the North too. At the Twins they skewered him through and propped him upright like the straw men standing in corn fields, they'd taken his head too and no one knew what had become of it.

Robb who was handsome enough to make even the girls beyond Wintertown talk of him, who made Jeyne Poole blush a deep red and stutter when he so much as spoke. Beautiful Robb. A straw boy like the straw men who scared off crows on farms, they had sown Grey Wolf's great mauling wolf maw onto his neck. They pinned him on the battlements at the Twins they said, so King Stark could glare down at his Kingdom. They said the wolf head held onto its snarl even as the maggots crawled into its eyes.

"Jon Snow avenged the Red Wedding!”

She wonders if her mother ever felt this way, watching these men take her boy away from her and make him a King instead. If they all said the same fool things.

 _The Red Wedding will not be avenged until every Frey is dead_ , until their House is nought but ashes she has scattered over rushing water, until they no longer have a name. Ramsay did her work for her whether her prompting is to blame or not, when he killed his father and poor Fat Walda and her new-born babe. Kin killer. The Lannisters still live, still breathe, Littlefinger stands out of the way enough that no one might think him key to the stage. She bought back Winterfell by tangling with him again and no one speaks, no one even looks her way to acknowledge what she has bought even if they do not know what she is like to part for it. It is Jon Snow who has avenged the Red Wedding. Perhaps Sansa will have to fuck bannermen for all of Jon Snow's other victories.

He does not contest it, overwhelmed, bowled over by what Sansa is attempting to be better at hiding and Petyr will always see. Confusion, her anger, her resentment, they are all keys to a greater dismay. There is nothing to forgive.

It is noble of him to say it and Jon’s face is so grim, unreadable a thing by nature that when he has been very startled or moved it puts such an agonizing youngness to his face. She’d pushed him enough times to know, at Castle Black, in the camp, the night before the battle…he had father’s stony face, a face that often gave nothing away…

But Jon does not have a calculating bone in his body, she thinks. He already speaks like a King, with a King's gentleness and his goodness, a King from a song. It might even have warmed her heart if it was not gouged through by the deep long claws of dread.

 _There is nothing to forgive_ , Sansa fears that if he is not careful there will be little he will be alive for to forgive.

She is proud of him, she doesn't deserve to be proud of Jon. She hasn't been a sister to him, it is too late and she must start that anew on foundation that shakes every time she thinks she might find her footing. The floor of her world tilts, cracking. She smiles, she must, she can't help it. Her bitterness and her resentment is short lived but it will be prompted in future she knows, every time she disagrees with her brother she will feel its sting and Petry will want to maximize on that. She can't hate Jon, she won't hate him, only for this moment at the very least she will not steal from him even if a part of her thinks him a thief for prompting these men's loyalties, a part that has been spoilt rotten by her Lord Baelish’s lies that had been constructed to always think him her lord-father, that says _but_ _I am the true-born Stark_. She'd told him that he was Lord of Winterfell, it was what she was trying to give him when she told him to take father and mother's rooms but she never thought that he might be _King._

Jon Snow rushed into battle like he had the fool's fever, after she'd _told_ him not to let Ramsay make him. His army broke formation and rushed through to save their lord as he stood like a man waiting to die for nothing, willing to die for nothing, tearing his sword from his sheath so he could be mowed down by Ramsay's cavalry for _less_ than nothing. He would have died then had it not been for the loyalty of his men. He would have died and Ramsay would have found her if she didn't kill herself first. _I won't ever let him touch you again_ , he'd sworn in the tent. Yet he'd still stood as Rickon fell, even with the same agony she'd felt. He still stood where death would have struck him down and made him a _liar._

He would have died if she had not written to Petyr and showed him she had need of him, as he always reminded her she did. Sansa has bought a bloody, grim victory – but it is Jon Snow's victory and it is she who has no name. Jon who is the Stark, and she, as Lyanna had been so deft in putting it, no better than if she were Lannister or Bolton. _A Bolton widow now,_ she realizes with alarm. Even if they were to have declared the union invalid Sansa realizes that despite her last words to Ramsay she might not be able to scrub his name from hers.

 _I am not a Stark_ , bile burned her throat as Jon rose. _They will take my name from me._

Jon had huffed a soft laugh and not looked at her. She had hated every stone in this ruined house if it would agree with him when he declined and without bitterness told her what no one had ever let him forget. What _she_ had never let him forget, a foolish girl too selfish with longing for her mother's approval and her mother's Southron mores to have bothered being a proper sister to him, _I am not a Stark._

On the ramparts she'd said, _You are to me_.

She'd meant it, for all the years that she wouldn't have. There are arrangements now to be made. Sansa thought she would lose the Wardenship of the North to Jon and had been equipped for this alternative; it is not a throne that holds power but those who stand behind it. As Petry has done with so many Kings. Sansa does not want power to rule but power to protect herself and what little is left to her, to honour their father's name, to make sure there was always going to be a Stark in Winterfell even if it is not considered she.

She had been equipped to lose. A bastard or a girl, not too different in the uncertainty of claim. She had been equipped to lose. She had not expected that she would not be credited in the least for their victory, further she did not expect that they would be making Kings today. Perhaps Petyr did not think so either but she did not pretend she knew much enough that she could stand on about what Petyr thought.

Now she has lost the entire North to him and there is a strange resentment to feel the loss of something you never truly believed could ever be your own. She is not a thought to them. She is not a factor. She does not want to play a game from the bottom again, she has climbed enough to play it where she might have better chance of protecting herself and protecting her brother. She does not want to be at the mercy of others. She sits by Jon, his sister. As her ladymother would have by the lord of Winterfell. They are shouting it, King in the North, King in the North.

In the godswood Petyr plants what cannot be exorcised without blood. She cannot hate Jon, she cannot even long be joyful for him, to pretend that she can still account for this new development that they could still survive his wights and the game both if only she applied herself. She was within the walls of her home, with Jon promising to protect her. He will be King. He has taken no throne from Sansa, she has not aspired to that ugly thing in years, and yet neither had he. Yet here he is, taking what could never have been given to her by the North. What Petry has slithered close to promise to her. Planting a seed. So she might hate her brother for feeling that she had right to nothing she'd wanted to have right to before, nothing she would ever want again, not since they parted Ned Stark's head from his body.

He will be King. It is best in the end, he is good in the end. Sansa does not want a crown but she is right to feel slighted that she is not considered for it. Her little dignity has survived too much to tolerate more maiming, her pride is present still. Sansa wants to be safe, Sansa wants a home, the freedom to determine her own life. But they have made Jon King and Sansa cannot worry about him making the promises he shouldn't. He could protect her, he'd said.

_I've fought beyond the wall against worse things than Ramsay Bolton!_

Sansa had felt a desperate, black anger – tormented by a flare of hatred, of him for his ignorance and herself for her failures, for her inability to convince him of the danger. He thought she had been dismissing him, had answered with the same angry pride men were always so protective of. In turn he had dismissed her, all her years of surviving meant _nothing_ to him if Jon could think to compare the evil of men to the evil of the dead and dismiss it as any less crucial. Yes, there were worse things than Ramsay Bolton but not beyond the wall which for now still stood. They are not blue and white, they will not warn you with snow and ice when they come to kill you, they will not kill you quickly as the wolf kills the buck for meat, as the dead would kill you.

They will look like you and me. They will burn you, burn your kin and torture you for the joy of hearing your screams. They might not even kill you. They will debase you and break you and take everything except your life. What is a sword of ice, the weapons of dead monsters? Alone and in itself? Without the weapons of men which are more than just swords, but words, treaties, the hearts of masses who will love you one day and yet call for your head the next. _The common folk were cheering when they took father’s head, do you know that?_

There are worse things than Ramsay Bolton, if you do not become the worst thing then and you do not realize the danger of the worse things then we are dead. It is not a thing she is sure she can do, Sansa is so tired of fighting, just as tired as he. She has been at a different war but one no less crucial. Jon has sat her by his side today, but what of tomorrow? Will he seek her counsel or dismiss that she might have any to begin with as he has done before? Will he show the men of the North that he values her as a figure who is worth respecting so that they might take note and follow suit? Or will he want her in her rooms, sewing and singing and set far away from the war table until she could be bartered off?

He could disgrace her and not even realize it, or validate her and not think of what he might endanger. She has to protect him, she does not trust him to protect her. Not because she thought him a liar or a fool but because Jon is as ill equipped to fight the war she knows as Sansa would be with his. She cannot raise a sword or lead an army but Jon cannot see the currents beneath an exchange and track well the shifts of power.

He does not realize as she does what the men who come to their feet and then to their knees for him mean. He does not notice the details in this tapestry. That he has offended Littlefinger and perhaps even the Vale lords, merry and raucous for now, will realize it too later and be wary in turn. They have not come here because they love her or Petyr so dearly, they will expect rewards, they will expect their loyalty to be answered with acknowledgment, for Jon Snow to honor their lord by name. He is not only a Warden of the North, but a King. They have given him the power to take lands and gift them. They will want what is theirs. Wights or no, they will fight, but Jon must keep them happy too. Glover, Manderly, Umber, Karstark, they deserted their lord because he could not honour them, because he dishonored them so he might not dishonour one foreign whore. She was not even with child and he still broke of the Frey engagement to marry her, because he had fucked her once. His own honour was more important than the lives of his men. He did not even send for you, he would not part with the Kingslayer. They hated mother for doing it for him and Robb punished her for defying him because she had acted where he would not. _He left you there._

How should she resent Jon for not crediting her, what has she done? She's brought Littlefinger back to Winterfell because he'd made sure she would always need him and Sansa would always be desperate enough and need. They'd taken Winterfell but Littlefinger is here. Arms folded, leant against the wall, a bystander, a player watching the room unfold. He takes it apart with his quick eyes, even in something as simple as celebration he sees things he might use. Look Alayne, notice, who shouts loudest, who takes longest to get to their feet, who is most eager to fall to their knees and who watches whom before deciding action. What does that tell you, what does that tell you?

The most dangerous man in all of Westeros and she has brought him here. His eyes pass over Jon and meet hers. Ice crawls along her cheekbones, her blood stops cold, there is a knife in her stomach, piercing tearing, a dragging dread, leaden and sinking her. No, it pounds in her throat, at the root of her tongue. _No –_

She doesn't trust him and he knows this. She has refused him and she had meant it, along with the fright there had been the accompanying thrill of her own stupidity telling her that she could _use_ it.

He has told her about his picture and it will never matter what she thinks, if she does not trust him she will be forced to rely on him eitherway, if she does not want to play the game he will move her himself.

If he thought to have seen her become Wardeness of the North as he’d implied then Jon has served as a complication. Sansa...she knows what Littlefinger does to complications, immediately or in time. His picture had needed her to become Wardeness of the North of this little she is certain, his picture might very well need Jon's body crushed beneath it.

He is more dangerous than anyone else, worse than Ramsay who was a clever mad dog but a mad dog nonetheless. More dangerous than wights or dragons, she believes him when he says he wants the iron throne for it is within his reach. Petyr has always made it so. She has brought him into her home and had thought to reclaim it as a place of safety, the men of the North, the noble houses, the free folk, rough-spun honest Davos Seaworth on his second King, they all leap to their feet and shout for their king. Jon stands and he looks down at her with a smile, uncertain, but warmed, as if he seeks her approval or her blessing. Sansa answers with the softening of her mouth, gentle and sisterly and it is only then does he turn towards these men who betray him by making him King. They are meant to know better, all of them. The Northern lords and the soldiers of the Vale, Royce, and Mormont and Cerwyn and Glover, gripped with their new oaths. And none of them see, none of them see –

The last King of the North failed them in his foolishness, he was killed. They will all be killed. Jon who she has just found, who is still such a fool – she can't hate him for it, but he must learn, there are things that only she can teach him gently but only if Jon can _learn_ them, and it will not be enough. _It will not be enough_. Littlefinger lounges against the far wall, watching her through the flashing sea, the armoured men, the glittering steel. Chaos is a ladder. They are all but straw with their blades and their words of war, they are just men made of straw.

If Sansa wears his old heart's face then Jon wears his most hated adversary. They might as well be crowning Ned Stark for all of Petyr's tenderness it would buy. King in the North, King in the North.

She wants to scream, she wants to howl. She wants to be the wolf with the wings of a bat said to have leapt out of the window after killing Joffrey, she wants to grab Jon in her talons and take him away but there is nowhere to go. There is nowhere else. There is no one else _left._

King in the North! King in the North! King in the North!

No. Sansa knows -

_She has seen what happens to Kings._

 

 

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	3. Chapter 3

"You make the death in me tremble."

\- Hades, Anita. O

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It had been so very long since the last feast Jon Snow had attended at Winterfell.

Lord Stark had been hosting the King, Jon had been sitting much further beneath the main table. Slotted between the blacksmith and the mason. It was a hateful bitterness that had welled within him later, when with ale sour on his tongue and belly twisting he'd found himself met by the imp. Tyrion Lannister had come upon him in the empty yard and the wryness of his laughter…Jon had not yet then known that a sound could all at once be full of both such warmth and such black mirth.

_Let me give you some counsel, bastard –_

Dark wisdom he remembered and wild Arya too. Always. His little sister hurling mash at Sansa and splattering the dress the Queen had gifted her intended good-daughter. Sansa had been furious. Uncle Benjen clapping him on the back. Ghost yet a pup and small enough that he could still lie under the table, his wet snout poking Jon's empty palm for more meat. At Robb's side and above Jon was Theon Greyjoy, he’d been wearing well his ever-present smugness, and conspiring and chattering away with Robb…the two had looked more brothers than Jon would ever have been allowed to be.

There had been merry music in a hall lit like the inside of an ember sconce, warm and bright. But today...today there is a gloomy still in the waning afternoon light of shortening days, and there will be no music and no laughter. Perhaps not for a long time yet.  _Perhaps never_.

The first minstrel to dare a merry tune at such a time would have had his head wrung by five hundred offended lords, or lords quick to prove themselves offended on Jon's behalf anyway. His kin are dead or lost, he sits next to a sister he does not truly know at a place he cannot own. Guests he would have once sat beneath are on their knees and _shouting his name._

Sansa's hair had then been put up in the ridiculously complex constructs befitting more the Southron fashion, she had worn the queen's pretty dress and Jon had worn Robb's finest old cloak. He'd sulked and kept his head down, pained by the idea of being noticed, wise to making himself unseen and she had been at the high table, listening raptly, her face glowing as she savoured all the news from court, eagerly attentive, the radiant centre of Lord Stark's children. It was a world away when all she loved best were songs about Jonquil and fair dragon knights. Listening to golden Cersei and intermittently glaring acidly at Arya to make up for keeping her silence, for whenever she wasn't gazing longingly worm-lipped Joffrey Baratheon's way.

And though today Sansa Stark looked like her mother, her high cheekbones, her plain assessing stare… her silence was as grim as her father's. Jon could not huddle his shoulders like a servant's son or cower from the stares of men curious to see honourable Ned Stark's single shame. He had been a man of the Night's Watch, a Lord Commander, a dead man and always a bastard – the times for hiding were gone. There could be no weakness in him, though his heart was beating so hard he thought it might burst.

He might have been wearing one of Robb's cloaks now as well though, reborn beneath his sister's clever sewing. Over his thrumming chest was the subtle etch of a direwolf's snarling maw, a badge he'd dared not dream of ever earning as a bastard, for bastards do not carry their sire's houses, even the inverted flags of royal Targaeryan bastards had been marked with audacity and always ended up as prelude to treason. He hadn’t the heart to properly protest when Sansa gave him these garbs, couldn’t explain to her for risk of hurting her, how her kindness was sweetness and injury both.

 _They said that bastard blood was treacherous by nature_ , Jon’s knuckles curled on the table. Even when King Aegon IV Targeryan legitimised his children on his deathbed he only succeeded in siring rebellions. Royal bastards…the names and the titles still could not hide the truth of their black blood, their blacker hearts.

The direwolf sits over his heart, it is a small design and practically unnoticeable on the dark leather but Jon feels it on his chest like a glowing hot brand, at times a truth gifted, and at others a false crown. It could split him in half, the wars that brand wages in him. Sansa had given it to him.

In the morning after the battle he had arrived to see his sister hunched in her chair, her oft regal posture bowed over her work. Had she even been in bed at all? Lady Melisendre had tilted her head at him where he stood blinking in the doorway, the pull of her mouth had been so faint he was free to think he'd only been imagining that she was laughing, but she was laughing and at him.

He had looked to the newly made bed and to the fire dying low in the hearth and been too exhausted to stop his frown. The entire night he'd been walking the grounds and the battlements, consulting the onion knight about their stores, the wounded and speaking to Tormund about the arrangement of the wildling camp amongst many of the other duties he could not trust anyone else with, certain in Sansa's safety in his old rooms until her father's could be properly readied. He'd had the idea of erasing every evidence of the Boltons in one night so that when his sister woke it would be to a new morning, to a proper home.

A foolish dream.

Sansa had greeted him, rising. Her fingertips had been pink, pricked raw as she had passed these new garments to him, she barely noted his thanks with a quick nod of her head, already hastily moving on to the next task.  _You cannot call me a Stark,_ it was on his tongue, the protest but she had already turned away from him, fussing on returning her materials and he found himself instead fastened to the floor and answering every quick, cursory questioning on his health and rest. Her attention divided and his supremely so, feeling like a fool with his arms around such a gift before a giver so dismissive of the effect of such a gift and its worth. _You cannot call me a Stark, please._

He'd swallowed thickly, there had still been warmth prickling at him despite the low fire. It occurred to him very late the strangeness of having his sister take the rooms he’d kept as a child, in the bleary dawn he regarded it with newer sensitiveness.

It was a small room, sparse…but it was the one he’d been able to get in order soonest, the one most familiar to him. These had felt like his sanctuary and his cell, both. He tried not to shift as Sansa moved about. There had been a pile of breeches and leathers and much she'd completed resting against her seat, all salvaged from the few things she'd found. He could have been wearing Robb's clothes or their father's, or something Lady Catelyn had been making for them even, in death surrendered to her daughter. Passed along to her husband's bastard. He’d rather he were wearing Ramsay Bolton’s old clothes than bear the agony of knowing how Lady Stark would have disapproved if she still lived, would have hated him even more. He'd felt unreasonable pain to remember the woman who would never give him the love he yearned for from a mother, as she'd loved her children. She hated and feared him for her husband's betrayal, for certainty that Jon would betray her children and -

And what had been in Jon's hands, crafted beneath Sansa's, had possibly begun in the hands of a woman who hated him. Alive where her firstborn could not be, wearing her children's clothes, her husband's. No better than a looter of corpses.  _I should not be here. You cannot call me a Stark._

He'd fumbled out an apology and made to beg her leave once he had realized his sister was clearly expecting servants to come in and start readying her bath. The red woman had swept to her feet and in an action that struck he and his sister both in its unexpectness, took Sansa's hand tightly and bowed her head over it, the execution both sisterly and regally grateful.

Sansa's responding nod was short and elegant after a composing pause, and then the red woman had turned to him. "Lord Snow?" she'd prompted.

Jon had fought off a frown and met Sansa's eye, trying not to look too searching. He owed the red woman his life but she had never fully stopped making him uneasy, he could not ask his sister anything so directly with the red woman still present, waiting for him to lead out of the room first.

Sansa's hands were clasped together, still. He found that he read her hands better than he read her eyes usually, her cool blue looks. It was not so very different from knowing Stannis by the grind of his jaw. He did not know how to breach the distance between them and didn’t know whether or not to be relieved when Sansa let a smile impress itself faintly on her lips. "I mean to go about the fort and see to what remains, and later to the godswood. Do you have need of me, Jon?"

No mention of Ramsay. She stood, waiting and he wondered what he expected to see. Blood? Wildness? Composure greeted him, nothing to tell him that she'd gone to her husband in the night and set his hounds on him. When Jon killed his first man he'd felt forever marked, _Qhorin Halfhand asked it of you. I killed men I admired._ Sansa had killed a man who deserved it, who she'd hated.  _Peace is meant to be the reward, Jon_. He couldn't fully say he didn't expect such retribution to come from Sansa's hands, but he couldn't fully pretend that he knew her at all.

Ser Davos had not liked it when the wildling tasked with guarding Sansa from afar had relayed the information - _this will be known by all the lords in moments. I don't begrudge the Lady Sansa but...surely..._

Tormund had looked up from where he'd spent the previous moments complaining endlessly about how he didn’t leave the Wall where he’d been freezing his balls off just so Jon Snow could take him South and make him freeze his balls off on Winterfells’ battlements instead, and had suddenly fallen silent. To add to the absurdity further he'd continued _being_ silent during the delivery of this news. At its end, his brows had jerked upwards and Tormund had made a noise of interest.

An interesting difference to Ser Davos' stiff frown and his hard eyes, as close to expressing alarm as they would ever openly be and Jon had stood, unable to explain the sharp, vicious fierceness in his chest as anything other than satisfaction, which troubled him. His hand had opened and curled behind his back, his burnt palm stinging. Sansa –

 _What have I allowed her to do?_ The concern was delayed and he knew it but it came at him with the intensity of a mob; guilt and regret. That the first thing he should feel upon hearing he'd let his sister bloody her hands was not concern for her innocence but a thrilling, vicious, grim voice that said _'good.'_

And between one man begrudgingly intrigued and another made suspicious and concerned, Jon Snow had said nothing, watching the high flags of the tents outside of the fort, lost in the flicker and wave of the sky-blue bird, thinking not of falcons but that odious little man. Lord Petyr Baelish.

Ser Davos wasn't incorrect, a trial could have provided opportunities. The Northern lords were arriving, they would have wanted to see for themselves how justice would be met out, to have all the crimes Ramsay Bolton committed, read out - acknowledged, paid for…

But in light of the coming horrors, Jon Snow did not have the time to delay with theatre. "The lords would have spent their time arguing with each other, fighting further. We can’t afford to dally and give them room for something that'll only turn out to be a complicated distraction, one that could prove to destroy whatever stability we're working for."

He remembered his lord father whenever the Northern Lords convened, they were a burly lot, all determined to speak their piece with loud and alarming candour - verging on disrespect if not all out swimming in it. They fought easily and then were just as quickly settled again. _A Northern Lord is not a complicated thing, he is a bear - only listen to him, assure him that his land, his kin and his properties are to be protected and he will be a loyal subject. But he will not respect a Ward who flinches, who is taken back by a loud, booming shout - he is expected to be allowed to say his piece, whether you like it or no, to come to food and drink and to leave satisfied and unharmed._

Ramsay Bolton would have made sure the entire thing would cause more disturbance, sabotaging any chance at peaceful resolution, and sowing further disunity. It would have been a mummer’s farce and endangered them.

"No." he murmured, remembering when he'd met the monster on the field before the battle and borne his grandstanding. How he'd smilingly sat his horse and looked at his sister and with barely a few words managed to make Jon feel his blood blaze and his heart harden with rage, his previous sense near abandoned, evaporating. Ramsay had smiled with long fondness, watching eerily hungry as Sansa rode away, with an almost post-coital ease.

 _She's a fine woman, your sister. I shall enjoy having her back in my bed_.

"No," Jon repeated, the fine snow parsing over his and the Onion Knight's boots. The wick of red hair disappearing beyond as Tormund set off to attend to the duties he'd been discretely assigned, soon Ser Davos would leave to do the same.

He stood waiting, Stannis' most faithful man, who worried, deeply, never unwisely or without cause.

"Will you give Ramsay a stage? He'd enjoy it too much. You've seen him, Ser Davos. He'd only need to open his mouth once to manage to bring even the most penitent brothers of the Quiet Isle to violence."

Jon had nearly abandoned reason at the parlay and in battle he'd been dragged by the sinews of his heart and nearly fallen.  _Little Baby Rickon_ , his heart felt as if clenched in a steel fist and all at once as though it might float from him, leaving him nothing but the scooped out, hollow corpse, who near forgot breath as but needless, meaningless formality. He thought it might rupture, leave him.  _No_. He stood firm on the battlements, for he could never afford to let Ser Davos see - grief itself a luxury.  _No. You can't blame it all on coming back. You can't say that's all that changed you._  Ramsay Bolton was no fool but a provocateur of the highest order, if Jon had let him say his piece on trial and stand before the Northern lords...the Bolton monster would have enjoyed nothing more, there would be blood on the stones of Winterfell again, allies lost to their own passions and wrath. Lords might have turned against one another for the betrayals they'd had to commit once the Boltons took power, for trespasses both real and imagined. Prey to taunts and sick, sly jibes from a creature who would have stood trial with the jaunty cheeriness of a man who did not fear death but directed it to do its bidding, turning his enemies swords against themselves, on each other. Reminding them of the humiliation he'd delivered upon them and made them deliver upon one another.

_It was I, fool for thinking him nothing more than a fool. To think he was only a beast. I underestimated his cunning._

"Besides, it is not my place to decide Ramsay Bolton's end. By rights Winterfell and whatever judgements to be passed in it are my sister's to make.” _I let her go to him because I knew it was her right._

It was Jon, not his sister, who had given orders for him to be put in the kennels. Perhaps his heart had already known in its secret longing and in its secret scheming that this would be such an outcome. _I was the one who ordered him taken there, did not a part of me perhaps expect it?_

He must have wanted Ramsay ripped apart by his own dogs too. A secret perhaps, his mind had kept from himself. _Perhaps I must have even wanted it for Sansa._

"Your brother - "

"Aye," it struck his with such impatience that he had to force himself to speak levelly. "I know. But none of them are here - " _none of them might ever return_. "It is Sansa's right. Even if Bran were here, she was the Bolton's hostage and she suffered him worse than any of these lords who come now, worse still when she was made a Bolton's wife. It'd be ridiculous to think to deny her or imagine there's any Northern lord who'll be fool enough to reproach her."

"Ramsay Bolton wounded many a lord."

 _And when they were asked – no, when they were **begged** to help collect, they were absent._  His stare hardened on the movements in the field beyond. There were horses on the horizon, the first party of men of the day. "When he - when he did what he did to her, what she will  _never_  speak of, what _none_  of them saved her from - what all of them in their silence allowed...forced or no, they were given the opportunity to join us and they still refused. When it was she who escaped and she who brought the men needed to fight for the North...any man who comes here would have to have some gall to dare criticize her."

"The Lady Sansa has been grooming you for the leadership, it was her intention when she made you head the campaign to retake your home."

 _He's not half-wrong. A pawn, a figure-head_...the fur of his mantle stirred against his jaw and he exhaled, tempted to close his eyes if it would give him any escape. "She would have done it without me."

"She would have tried, of that there is no doubt."

He felt his skin itch, irritated. Exhaustion swept over him in wave, unsettling his reserve and his patience. He felt unreasonable and ill-equipped, living on too little sleep and in attending to the aftermath of the battle, met and mocked at every turn by new evidence of all the horrors the Boltons had piled upon a place he once held in his heart as his home, even if it was never meant for him.  _I would have left, I would have gone South. If Sansa hadn't found me, I'd have run_.

Ser Davos' skepticism was neither malicious nor ill-meant, he knew - but it wasn't anything Jon hadn't already tortured himself thinking about before quickly scrambling to dismiss before any such ugliness could root itself. He didn't  _want_  to doubt Sansa, especially after what he'd seen in her eyes when he’d fallen upon that monster. And what he would later tell her on the battlements.

He had told no one of her knowledge of the Vale army, no one would have understood.  _Jon_  hadn't understood until he'd made himself, and rather forcefully at that, for there was still much about it that he needed to know - like what Lord Baelish could have done to his sister to make her feel so. When they had even spoken…

He could not ask the others to find it out for him. Perhaps they would understand but he could not take that risk.

Robb would never have let Sansa feel so desperate, so vulnerable…He used to carry her on his shoulders when she was still little enough to allow it but not too little that she didn’t already know the truth of Jon’s bastardry.

Robb laughing as she reached, her fingers stretching and barely brushing the first bloom she wanted before Robb would quickly step this way or that, pulling her away. " _Robb!"_ she'd whine, "I almost got it! It's not funny! Why are you laughing! You're so ungallant - _no_ \- I don't want it _now_ \- my arms are tired, _yes I'm cross!_ No - If I try you're just going to do it again! Oh, you! I'll ask Jon instead if you won't help me - even if mother says he's a bastard at least he won't be beastly like you - …mother'll be cross - you promise? Alright, I'm going to do it again, but if you even _dare!..._ Higher, it's just - _Robb!_ Put me down now! You're laughing! I _hate_ you! Jeyne always says how it must be wonderful to have a brother - but I'll tell her now that she's nothing but a silly little fool if she wishes for one because you're _awful!_ And _mannerless_ and you - _you_ don't even know how to use the tableware the way you're _supposed_ to – you’re going to embarrass yourself if a Southern lord ever visits – they’re going to say the lord of Winterfell’s son is a savage beast! They’d have better luck making Arya father’s heir for all the difference it would make - You're awful! How am I supposed to be the Queen of love and beauty without my crown of flowers - I need them! If I don't have them before the evening then the Locke girls will all be gone and I promised we'd play - we can't play without my crown and they shall never come back again! And we'll never have any other ladies visit again, and it will always be a cold, dull place with no one to talk to! or dance with! Jeyne’s ill and I’m cross with her besides, and Arya won't even wear a dress! You're to deprive me of the only gently bred company I’ve ever gotten – _and I’m ever to have!_ because you won't help me! I hate you! Let me - No! Let me down right _now!_ _You've_ made me yell! _Arya?_ Arya always makes me yell because she's wild and all she gets is praise for it - go play with Arya, see if I care - no! Don't touch me! No, of course I don't forgive you! Well, because you're not sorry! You're still _laughing!_  You’re – you’re worse than a wildling! _I’ll never speak to you again!”_

Jon had come up to Robb after his half-sister had run away, around the bend of trees disappeared the bright trail of her skirts, strange in the North were the women preferred muter colours. She was so distraught she didn’t care for carefully lifting the hem off the floor. She’d had tears in her eyes and her little face was pink.

Robb was still clutching his sides and with some difficulty managed to rise properly, ribs still hurting. “Well, oh come on, brother – I’ll race you on the climb!”

And so it was that Robb had come upon the circle of girls, Sansa’s face was closed and cold, polite – miserable and then the little ladies had exclaimed when Robb had pulled his arm from where he’d hidden it behind his back and with flourish bowed and presented the flower crown to his sister. “For my Queen of Love and Beauty.”

The girls had delighted, clapped and exclaimed – astonished and completely captured by Robb’s exaggerated and flowery gesture. Theon had given a sharp snort and Jon had elbowed him in the side from their hiding place. Sansa’s little face had opened with shock, her eyes impossibly bright. She couldn’t possibly dress her brother down in front of so many admiring girls. Gracefully, she put her sewing to her side on the wet, spring grass and with courtesy and gentleness accepted the gift.

Robb had put it in her hair himself and the girls had cooed. Sansa was too well-bred to preen openly but she sat straight up, rather primly and nodded when Robb swept into another flowery bow and taken her leave.

“What a fop.” Theon exclaimed, in tones of disgust and admiration.

Jon had silently agreed, his amusement tinged with an absurd awe. Robb had in a singular moment managed to look like the gallant lord’s son. It was the first time he realized how deeply Robb was who he was. Handsome and destined for responsibility and grand opportunities otherwise closed to Jon. He felt shame at how it must be, for a bastard to stand next to a lordling, how it must look. An oddity, a charity – for his brother to bother loving him, honouring a bastard.

Theon had stood up from the bushes, hootING. “Are you a Targ, then! Kiss her ladyship, will you, noble lord!”

“Shut up!” Jon had hissed, feeling foolish remaining hunched where he was despite it being so very clear now that Theon had exposed them.

“Fiend!” Robb had hollered and whipped towards the voice. “Who dares speak of my sister so flagrantly!”

“It is I!” menacingly, their father’s ward had called out, stepping out from the shadow. The girls gasped. “Though the lady does herself know!”

Robb had made a noise of distress and taken to knee by his sister, whispering passionately. “Who is he? Do you know this cur? Tell me true!”

Sansa blinked, the flowers still stirring in her hair. “He…” she tried not to frown, taken by surprise by these very unexpected turn of events. “He is…Ser – “

“Mine own brother! Most foul, most jealous – Aegor!”

“Yes – that is – that is Ser...SerAegor Bittersteel,” Sansa rushed. She paused, then nodding solemnly, “But it isn’t true, for he is only my brother – “

“Am I not also your brother?” Robb had taken her hands, affecting the mournful cry of a wounded lover. “But not only your brother, surely!”

“Brother!” Theon stepped forward, “You don’t even deserve to be that. My lady fair! You did once promise to marry me, or have you forgotten? Step away from her, else I’ll mark you again and it’ll be no red birthmark from the Maiden that I’ll gift you – for I shall take an eye!”

There were cries of surprise. The Locke girls looked madly between the boys, completely immersed in these grand imaginings and eagerly so. They clutched at each other’s wrists and whispered to one another, raptly holding their breaths.

Theon had always wanted Winterfell. In all of their games he was the villain, come to take the fort or capture the maiden – Jon had cursed him, darkly aware that their father’s ward had wishes not unlike his imaginings. Lady Stark would sooner have her husband legitimize his bastard than give any of her daughters to Theon in marriage.

The girls were watching, rapt with horror and delight. Jon was not so amused but his half-sister’s face was gleaming, glowing with pleasure and interest, keenly involved now in this whipping, quickly turning story which was unfolding so quickly.

“Fiend! You lie! Furthermore you are no true man of honour – for I see that you do not come to face me alone!” Robb kicked up a branch from the floor, something they had all attempted once before only this time instead of the branch whacking Robb in the face it flipped and landed in his hand. His brother’s jaw opened and he looked at his friends with surprise, glowing from the success at the trick. He whipped the ‘sword’ back and forth, with a serpent’s flourish and pointed it at…Jon.

 _No. Robb, why_ –

“Step forward and face me!”

Jon had groaned, Theon had looked even more amused.

“Well! Forward!”

Grumbling and wretched, Jon had risen from his crouch and stood dumbly. Unwillingly dragged into the game.

“And who are you?” Robb called gravely, cold and haughty. He looked down to his sister, his accusation quietly asking “or is this another one of your lovers, sister?”

“No!” One of the Locke girls cried, horrified. “Sansa – no, Lady Shiera – he can’t be one of your lovers – he must be…”

Jon felt himself flush with humiliation. This was a foolish, dangerous game – if Lady Stark were to hear of it she would be displeased. The Targeryans were mad and married one another to grow more mad, he could barely be Sansa’s brother – let alone be deemed of valour enough to play the legendary knights, further – red deepened along his cheekbones, the back of his neck hot – of all things Shiera Seastar’s lover.

The true bastard among a true born brother and the son of a lord of the iron islands. They could all pretend, but it was Jon who could not take off the mummery, he could not make it only a game. _I was born a bastard and will die the same._

 _Snow, Snow, Snow_ – Lord Mormont’s raven cawed, its wings beating furiously in the rafters – _Snow, Snow -_

“Robb,” he hissed and in two steps his brother had pressed the point of his branch against Jon’s throat. Jon scowled at the prod.

“I am Brynden the BloodRaven Targeryan! Address me as I deserve!”

It was another one of those moments he hated his brother, for to Robb this was a kindness – a stubborn kindness to involve his poor bastard brother so – innocent and ignorant – but he was only bringing Jon to attention, to be found lacking and –

He didn’t even _want_ to play this game. They were all becoming men, they’d stopped playing the silly pretend games – Robb had adamantly refused to continue it, demanding they go hunting instead, so bent on becoming a real man instead of dallying with his silly sister.

But today Robb was indulging Sansa, after they’d climbed the tree together Jon had watched his brother weave flowers into a crown, his fingers still moving quickly, still remembering long after he’d become old enough to refuse to play such games. Indulging Sansa was Robb delightedly indulging himself and the part of him that perhaps missed these games.

“Sansa – No, _Lady Shiera_ , he is not! Is he?” One of the girls whispered, “Surely – “

“No. No! he can’t be.” The littlest Locke piped up, and wailed when she was tickled but she pushed for breath and rushedly blathered. “He’s – He’s – “

 _A bastard?_ Jon braced himself, careful of his own anger. The whole mummer’s farce was turning on its head if trueborns were to play bastards, but actual bastards still gave pause -

“I know who he is.” Sansa announced, looking right at him. Jon tried not to look defiant, his jaw squared, feeling Robb pause, wary – as if remembering too late that their little half-sister was her mother’s daughter, long past she who was not aware of her half-brother’s bastardry. Who had frequently made it clear.

Jon saw his brother hesitate, his mouth thin, threatening a frown at the idea that Sansa would say the proper and stupid thing, and disappoint her big brother.

Jon held his breath, his chest tight with anger so it would not tremble instead with pain. His upheld hands curled into fists but when Sansa next spoke, she tipped up her chin and her eyes were frost blue. “He is Daemon Blackfyre.”

Robb stilled. Then grinned wildly at Jon’s stunted shock. “Daemon Blackfyre.” He repeated, speaking impressively. “My Uncle–

“Brother,” Sansa prompted politely.

“Aye! My…brother.” Robb corrected himself smoothly, “it is difficult to tell with my one eye you see.” He explained sagely, and clapped one palm seriously over…the wrong eye. Robb had dozed off a little during that lesson, Jon remembered. “Have you come to aid me or to kill me?”

“I haven’t taken your eye yet, my lord.” Theon smirked, the girls giggled. “But don’t you remember Brynden? You treacherous curr, this is a dead man you killed with your own bow.” Theon sneered, “Your own kin you slayed! Why would he aid you?”

It was a strange game where Theon and Jon found themselves allies in their roles.

“Is this a ghost, then?” Robb asked, curious. He hummed, turning a querying look at the girls, a mummer playing off of his delighted audience – Jon saw more than half of them blush deeply, the littlest Locke shrieked out in the affirmative, clapping like a child in a pantomime and Robb took note and gave a wise nod, then he turned back to Jon. “Surely, you must know it was an accident. My lady, why is our dead brother here?”

“His love for his sister Daenerys still keeps him here.” Sansa said mournfully before clearing her throat. “That’s you, Arya.“

Jon had not noticed his tiny sister there, she was still small enough as to be hidden behind Sansa where she was sulking and must have dozed off in the warm afternoon. No doubt having become bored after feeling excluded from Sansa’s circle of ladylike sows.

She blinked groggily, having eaten an entire plate of sweatmeats. She was still so very tiny and must have had to have been near sedated by her own full stomach to have allowed being put in her little patterned frocks. Her hair was awry as always. That always made him want to smile.

“Why would Daenerys care for a load of dumb boys, she’s off conquering Dorne!” Arya, still pudgy and small shot to her feet after having been nudged awake. She scowled and waved her arms. “With ships and an army!”

Sansa frowned, trying to be patient. “That’s Nymeria, Arya – you know that. Daenerys married a Martell at the behest of her brother Daeron – to make it the Seven Kingdoms and make peace. Her husband loved her very much, but she and her half-brother Daemon Blackfyre were very much in love – “

“Did she kill him?” Arya demanded.

“Well, no – “

Arya made a disgusted huff and Robb swept in quickly before there would be any damage. “ _Silence!_ It was I that killed him! By accident! Surely Bittersteel has poisoned you against me! Do you believe me?”

Jon sighed. “I believe you – “

“Kill him!” Arya roared, gleefully, pumping her little fists – the other girls looked aghast but Jon found himself infected by his sister’s wildness and her excitement, who was loudest and most adamant about her loved brother Jon. He felt his heart grow three sizes and his mouth threaten a smile even as Sansa gasped Arya’s name, admonishing her. “Well! Kill him! Oh, there’s no point Sansa – they’ve been standing about blabbering about fighting – let them fight! Fight!”

Sansa sighed, her fingers jumping to her temples, her crown of flowers shivering in the coolness of spring. She looked like her mother then, when she didn’t know Jon could see her, tired of resisting the passions of others more unruly – in the rare moments she let herself seem …softer, and more human. “Alright then,” she said wearily, “Alright, go on, murder one another please.”

“Very well,” Robb declared, “Only, will the lady give me her – “

But Theon had already fallen upon Robb, uninterested in waiting for Robb to make yet another ostentatious show of asking for his lady’s favour. Arya yelled her encouragement and Jon got whacked in the scuffle for his troubles, even standing exactly where he was he still found himself dragged into the tumble before he could move from it – and then, in a twist of allegiances, found both Robb ‘Bloodraven’ and Theon ‘Bittersteel’, the bitterest of enemies, turning on him. And bruising and bruised, his brother had laughed his big laugher – the kind of laughter so very full, taking the whole of the chest, warmth and delight – no one else would ever laugh like Robb – would have quite made him feel so at ease.

He missed Arya, He missed Robb and even Sansa who didn’t oft even bother to look at him, clever Bran and little baby Rickon and sometimes…if he could be honest with himself - sometimes he might say he even missed Theon.

Robb was Sansa’s brother, the one she would have gone to if she could have. He would never have let Sansa feel so desperate as to seek her aid elsewhere, never let Sansa feel like she couldn’t tell him what she planned to do…He’d tell Jon not to indulge Sansa’s silliness and yet had himself at times been unable to deny himself doing just that.

She had not been very close to all of their siblings, but she doted on Bran as all of them did, mothered Rickon, tussled with Arya and looked up to Robb. But she was always with Jeyne Poole, away from them.

There would have been a siege if the Boltons had gotten wind of it, Jon told himself. Men would still have died.

Ser Davos however, didn't need to be told much for the timing of the arrival to be suspicious. Jon wondered again what he'd done to earn such loyalty and concern. _He thinks she schemes, that she's used me. It's not true, it's not like that - we've not yet...it will take time -_ it would take time.

Jon gathered breath in his lungs, fortifying himself and slowly he turned, facing Ser Davos. "If it weren't for her, I would have gone off. I wouldn't have cared about the wildlings, or the Wall. Do you remember that?"

Ser Davos said nothing, his eyes expressive, touched by that sadness that encroached around them for so many years.

"Well?" he demanded quietly, "Do you?"

"...Aye."

"Sansa - she's...she’s just a girl." _And she gave me more than her father ever gave me._ My father. _Our father_. "What she's done was survive” They all had to, since they’d first left Winterfell. Surely the onion knight himself understood the burden, he carried it himself. They had all done quite enough to survive. “Not long ago she was only a girl, pretty and polite and the heart of courtesy and though we were never very close, for her mother…Lady Stark – she still deserved better than this.”

They had all been children.

“She deserved a good home, a good marriage, a family whole and alive. I trust her because I have to, I cannot afford not to and she has been shown all too well the punishment that comes in trusting others. I've seen it in her eyes. I know why you are wary of her but I cannot be. It's my duty to make sure she's safe and I cannot do that if she doesn't trust me. If _I_ do not trust her, _she will never trust me_. Ser Davos, I know. Believe me I _know_. I only want you to forget your suspicions of what you view as strange and help me if you still have will enough to do so."

"I don't mean to doubt your sister's loyalties, Jon - or to judge her character, I can't pretend to imagine the horrors she endured - the walls of this place are proof enough of it and a fort is only stone and mortar. I only mean to tell you...to be careful."

"I've got enough holes in me to remind me of the importance of being careful."

Ser Davos's mouth thinned. "It's no laughing matter."

"If I laugh it just hurts more," Jon returned lightly. "I try staying away from laughing matters, else I'll bleed to death."

Ser Davos only frowned deeper, his look no less grave. Jon would have laughed had he had it in him to do so. He was so weary, his aches an everpresent disruption, like fingertips stinging after a snow fight - painful in thaw. It was lack of sleep surely, for no place could be colder than the Wall. _Or it is that Winter deepens…_

Robb and he would warm their hands, huddled next to the fire in the smithy so Lady Catelyn wouldn't scold her eldest when he came in cold to the touch. She would wipe Robb's curls from his eyes and frown in disapproval but her hand always looked gentle and soft even if she was scolding. She was scolding and thus could not smile, but ever in her severity there had been tenderness and calm.

Jon would hang back, trying not to watch - a wretched voyeur for an exchange whose warmth and tenderness he would never know - and yet, time and time again, his eyes would rise from their desperate watch of the floor and be drawn, like an arrow to a board and with the frequency of Theon Greyjoy's exacting accuracy with the bow, to the sight of a mother's love for her son.

"The lords," Ser Davos tipped his chin, his eyes focusing on the same banners Jon had marked. "It's only going to get harder from here. I don't need to tell you that - "

"Alright," Jon said, the dismissal forcefully gentled and softly spoken was still undeniably that. “Then don’t.”

Do you have need of me? Sansa had asked that morning and he shook his head in answer.

He wished it could have waited until Ghost could take her but the direwolf had taken off as soon as the battle was done and been lost in the wolf's wood. Jon had tried calling him back with the strange string that tied their minds together but it was pointless, the direwolf was leaping and bounding across lands neither had thought they'd ever see again. At home.

Jon had not slept, but in leaning once or twice against this door or that, and in snatches of sleep shorter than breaths, seen through the beast's eyes, loping through the snow - wolf dreams. They’d never come to him quite so vividly before he’d died. They were in their way reassuring, or as much as he could be reassured in these times. No unnatural thing moved in those snows, only unlucky rabbits and quick red foxes. The grounds safe. And though he took whatever little comfort he could in this poor and temporary tranquility it was offset by the chaos of his own arrangements. His eyelids had flickered, there was a flurry of ravens taken flight miles west, disturbed by a great white body, cawing - waking him out of the dream, but Winterfell itself was an unwaking nightmare yet, a ruin he felt distress to think incapable of being mastered back to its former self.

He was not her keeper and hesitant of making her feel so. The skin beneath her eyes was dark, her pallour ghostly itself...perhaps it had been a foolish dream to think she'd be able to sleep easily...would any of them ever sleep well again? He could not tell her so. At best it would be unhelpful frivolity at worst an insult upon her composure. Jon had grimaced and made his excuses after he'd gotten the dismissal he'd desired heard from her.

The Thenn who had stood before his sister's door was exchanging words with Tormund. The husband to bears had his paw around the arm of scrawny girl who had his look. Perhaps even one of his daughters, built not like a cub but lean as a cat and thrice as surly but she bore Tormund's rattling grip, and rolling her eyes took the Thenn guard's place all the same. It was some comfort to know that a spearwife would be taking guard up during a moment where his sister was in a bath.

 _Did she even sleep?_  he'd found himself demanding the red woman.

 _Your sister is a woman flowered, twice wedded, twice escaped and once widowed_ , the red woman had murmured but her amusement had vanished, the musical lilt of her voice subdued. Her step to the hall was slow and later he understood her reluctance for she must have sensed then that with the battle's end began her own trial. _Do you mean me to treat her otherwise? I am no septa, Jon Snow._

Tormund caught up with them and quickly lowered his voice. _He's not yet within_.

Jon had nodded and erred on the side of politeness by offering a short thank you, Tormund had snorted and curtsied with exaggerated daintyness before he tore off again to likely bother his daughter again.

Lord Baelish was within _now_ , by the far wall and motionless in a sea of oaths. He had spent the night in the Arryn camp and Jon had received no report of when he had decided to come into the fort yet. Jon's fingers curled as men shouted, the smile had long since bled off his face.

Sansa had come to stand next to him on the battlements before, the space between them was not so forbidding then. They had watched the red woman ride away and Sansa had told him to take her parent’s rooms. She called him a Stark.

_Lord Eddard never would have made me a Stark, I was afraid sometimes of calling him father. He did not make me his true son, how is it that you make me your true brother?_

_How is it that they will make me King?_

No. He felt struck as if by lightning, the words scorched in his throat. It was everything he’d ever wanted but it wounded him to think it his – what would Lady Stark say? If he took any of this, any of it at all it would have been worse than openly coveting everything Robb and his trueborn siblings had had. It was wrong.

The men on their knees were looking up at him for direction, for words. He had forgiven Lord Cerwyn and now he’d felt like a fool, shame bloomed hotly in the pit of his chest – giving words of forgiveness with the benevolence and kindness of a lord –

“Thank you,” he could barely speak, it had grown quieter but they had not heard him. The Free Folk were still yelling, the Knights from the Vale’s swords like thrusting vipers. “You honour me, I cannot – “

“KING IN THE NORTH!” Some roared and he felt wretched.

Jon cleared his throat, his knuckles boring into the table. “I decline. My lords, please - Winterfell belongs,” he tried louder, began to speak more purposefully. “Winterfell belongs,” he could barely look at her for his own shame “to my sis– “

Sansa was on her feet, taking his hand. The panic in her eyes confused him but she raised his arm above him and declared, “There is no man worthier to succeed my brother than my brother,” she spoke loudly and impressively, “My King – “

Jon took her by her shoulders but she was already kneeling – the top of her head glimmering red, he felt his mind rush madly. Her eyes warned him not to stop her. “Sansa,” he began attempting firmly to halt her, pulling her up and was surprised momentarily by her compliance and then just as quickly robbed of speech. Sansa came up but it was not to listen to him, it was to take his face into her hands and pull him to her. Her mouth was soft when she kissed his cheek.

“Please,” her whisper harshly stirred along the curve of his ear, pressing on during his moment of shock. “Jon, you mustn't - _do not refuse them_.”

Words dried up before he could even think to give them voice as his sister squeezed his fingers with a desperation that belied the radiant smile she gave the hall, glowing as though she had never been prouder. Jon's head rushed, his cheek cold and allowed to be weakly linked to where she'd had their fingers still adamantly entwined. His sister beamed and the Northern lords whooped once more, fooled.


	4. Chapter Four

"I love the girl. Can I not have something gentle too? The winter is outside this time; I have locked away the moon and nothing white shall hurt us. So let me have just this. Her smile in the dark. Our hands, held up against the softening light"

 

\- Violets, Yiwei Chai

* * *

It was but a blur, between his mechanical words of gratitude and Sansa rising and ordering a feast to fill their guest’s bellies, Jon could hardly make sense of it. He must have spoken  _some_  sense but he could not for the life of him remember. Mead came in, food in such quick rescue that he wondered faintly if she had prepared for this outcome – or if it was just a trick.

  
Once Jon sank into his seat again it was with a leaden and keen hatred for himself, reminded once again of that familiar wound he had thought himself above. That which had blinded him and allowed his own arrogance and terrible conceit to immediately overwhelm the great terror and apprehension Lyanna Mormont had triggered in him when she raised him to that which he did not deserve. _I should have refused._

  
Once upon a time he hadn't known a thing but the longing to be a Stark as well as the longing to be completely invisible to them, to not feel so severely a bastard and he had still felt that awful longing now, the irony bittersweet. Jon had been afraid of what it meant for Sansa to call him a Stark, he would always feel like a bastard, even with noble sons kneeling and calling him a King.

  
 _Kill the boy and let the man be born_ , Maester Aemon had warned.

  
 _All of it is yours by right,_  his sister smiled politely at the guests, a gracious host.  _Why do you ask this of me? Why do you allow this?_

  
But her fear had silenced him and it was too late now to correct this ugliness.  _I am a fool._

  
 _Because you are still the boy,_  that sudden dead thing croaking alive, a weak wisp that answers eagerly because your sister called you a Stark, even when a boy knows better than to hope. Even when a boy should know better than to let foolishness delay justice, to be a bystander made complicit in stolen birthright by responding with  _inaction._

  
He burned with the desire to see her alone, to speak to her. He knew he would be unable to rest until he had answers from her, not from who she was  _pretending_  to be. He wished nothing more than to take her by the arm and tear off from the hall with her, to speak honestly as they had once done when she’d supped bitter mead in the Lord Commander’s rooms and in the firelight before the battle. She could scream at him and fight him, Jon did not care. All he wanted from Sansa was the truth, to tell him something –  _anything_  – that would make him understand her fear, her determination to make him a thief –

  
_I’ll protect you, I’ll do everything I can to protect you, but you cannot…you cannot ask this of me -_

  
He’d come to terms with shame as a bastard, but the boy in him was a fool, rising up alive even when it knows that the rest of Jon Snow was so cold and long starved that had kindness had a belly it would not know what to do with these warm morsel except turn, twist, roil.

  
 _It should be Sansa._  The rush of warmth that had glowed within had already dissolves immediately, miserable with his own wretchedness. Jon's fist cracks and he curses himself for being taken away with the idea of having had any of their respect or their regard.

 

When he should have halted their praise he had stood instead to receive it, when he should have remained seated and stern in refusal, when he should have remained apprehensive he had allowed himself to listen to them. It was not his, none of it. He thought that he was a man hardened from war that perhaps the boy who had entertained such fantastic, foolish notions play-fighting with Robb, of ever being a Stark…Jon had thought the boy dead. But readily that traitorous part of him had clamoured forward, too bright-eyed with yearning and dreams that it did not care for the wisdom to be found in holding on fully to his fear, to have been sensible instead. That sang with _Finally._  That had, after so much time at the Wall where he thought he had worn the word 'bastard' so well that it could no longer hurt him…Jon, when Sansa called him a Stark and when they swore themselves to him had had – even momentarily – indulged the erroneous stupidity of forgetting his bastardry.

  
Winterfell, he swallowed tightly, Winterfell belongs to my sister Sansa.

  
This loyalty was undeserved. Eddard Stark's true born daughter was by his side, all of it was hers by right. How could he have let them call him King? How could he have been foolish enough to have been swept away by their sudden declarations. It was graceless.  _It should be Sansa._

* * *

 _Wretched._ He now remembered everything about being a bastard, Lady Catelyn had been right to hate him and fear his presence. When she held her children close to her breast while Jon only had Old Nan’s skirts to cling to, when she soothed Robb’s brow when Jon could only shiver and sweat, watched by the old master and treated by droughts alone. She’d been right in the end, it was not only Ned Stark’s infidelity that had burned her but the ever-present threat Jon had been to her even back then when he was nothing more than an icy bundle fastened to a wet-nurse’s teat. A threat to her children and their claims. _  
  
_ Sansa’s hands are fitted in dark fawn skin and composed in her lap, her chin raised slightly and her eyes ahead watching the bannermen. Cool as a winter lake. He can’t tell what she’s thinking. She had smiled at him, which had been more than he deserved. Now with the clamour dying down they are returning to other matters she is cool, correct, a lady. With her red hair a dim blur he can imagine it is Lady Catelyn instead in the periphery. Never looking at him but knowing him exactly, always.  
   
Jon swallows hard and closes a hand over his knee as if to anchor himself. He clenches his fist so tightly his gloves crack and his knuckles still raw, sting in protest. Sansa deserves better than this.  
   
He had returned to Winterfell as Jon Snow, on his feet he had been Jon Snow. He’d been made King before a host of Northern lords by the time he’d taken his seat again.  _Say something, His chest was tight_ , the root of his throat tangled round the grey stone of dread.  _Refuse them, it is not your right. It has never been your right_. Sansa had smiled warmly at him, he had felt the same bumbling shyness that he’d felt with the weight of fur and sable in his arms, the wolf etched leather. It had meant so much to him.  
   
It had been funny in their childhood how dull Sansa was with her properness and her love of needle and thread, sewing away by the hearth while her siblings whooped in the woods and the snow. It wasn’t very funny now. It looked exactly like what father had worn the last time Jon had seen him, he had realized that all the nights at the Wall when they’d been together that this was what she had been making. For him. She had put a great deal of thought into it,  _it is the finest thing you have ever owned._  
   
When she had smiled at him it had been that very same smile she’d had at the Wall, less self-satisfied of course. She had been pleased with her work with her grin confident that he would like it she had looked like a brasher girl. So removed from the snow beaten, pale thing that had thrown itself into his arms, once more remembering how to retake her strength. So removed from the sister he remembered who smiled with courtly sweetness and shyness when she wasn’t screaming herself hoarse at Arya, she had smiled at him at the Wall like he was finally her brother and liable to receive her teasing. Her gifts too. Her regard.

* * *

If she weren’t the only one sat next to him he would have thought it someone else lightly touching his wrist.

 

Beneath the table where no one could see, her hand gentle as if to stay him. His breath slid out from between his teeth. Just as startling as when she’d taken his hand at the Wall, firmly telling him of what must be done. Jon hadn't remembered the last time someone touched him if it wasn’t to hit him or to clap him with a soldier’s pat. The last woman he’d ever touched was Ygritte, palms rough from her bow, silver scars smattering over strong knuckles and a stout short hand with slender fingers. Quick, clever, rough.

He’d been unable to understand what Sansa was doing, still not yet familiar. He remembered his surprise at how after everything that had happened to her she could still have such soft hands and that her palms had been the colour of milk.

_She will always be a Lady, come winter, come war._

 

She would never be able to hide it and it had worried him, he could neither deny her then. Even trembling and bruised, bent over from exhaustion. It was how she disembarked from her horse, how she spoke to Dolorous Edd when he apologized for the food. She had been a sweet girl by the fire beckoning for his flagon of ale, when she had spluttered and had laughed. But in the halls of Bear Island Lady she had used the proper address with assured confidence, recovering well in the face of Mormont forthrightness.

 

In her Southron dresses she loved so much as a youth, in the Northern garb, it had punched through him once or twice how like her lady mother she sometimes looked. He had been afraid of Lady Catelyn but he had longed for the thing that was between her and her children. That tenderness...Jon had not known his own mother’s name and never would. He would have given anything for Lady Catelyn to look upon him the way she looked upon her children. He had learned better how to shove down and bury the shameful ache.

 

It was in the way she spoke to Lord Glover the first time, firm and demanding. Even when Jon couldn’t help a frustrated sigh knowing that Sansa’s reminder of old oaths would but incense the old lord instead of turn him to their cause. It was heavy handed of her when Lord Glover had known nothing but loss fighting for Robb. But Jon had understood her, they’d all been desperate and so brittle, forced to answer scorn.

 

It was in the way she spoke to Lord Glover  _after_  the battle. When she could have been cruel and cold, haughty and righteous for his refusal to fight for them, Jon had instead seen her speak to him with the same well-bourne courtesy her mother had used in addressing vain Queen Cersei. If she disliked him no one would think it. Perhaps that bewildered Lord Glover and the other lords who had refused the call more than any cool rebuke would have. It was more effective in inciting their shame without inciting their anger, Sansa was being gracious when anyone else would have been pointed in their disdain.

 

In rags, in silks, with or without her dark gloves, Sansa would always have these soft hands, Jon thought. Just as no one could ever mistake Arya for not being exactly who she was. No matter how many dresses Lady Stark tried wrestling her into, no matter how many lessons she was forced to sit through with Septa Mordane, Arya’s grin would always give away her brashness, she would always take the most joy in knowing her own strength in the yard.

 

_Arya,_  a fresh wave of pain tore through him.

 

Sansa would not be able to hide away, not disguised as anything lower than her station. They could dress her in the rags of Craster’s poor daughters and she would still be found out immediately. Sansa would always be a Lady. They could not kill that in her.

 

She wore the cool expression of a noble-woman, but below the table where no one could see she held onto the wrist of his burnt hand with a grace that existed for him alone.

But Jon knew too. Bearing Lord Mormont’s sword or tearing his knuckles on the teeth of mad men. In Robb’s hand-me-downs, in the black, or in a fine lord’s furs, alive or dead, in the ruined keep, in the burning fort, the ice beyond the wall…

 

_They can make you Lord Commander or give you a crown, whether you are leading men or gasping as they bloody the snow with you. Whether or not you win this war. Noble lords who knew your father and followed Robb, they can swear themselves to you, your sister can even call you a Stark –_

 

But Jon Snow would always know.

 

_You will always be a bastard._

 

* * *

Beneath Sansa’s hand he stilled, grinding every bone in his body into silence. The light, unassuming pressure of her fingers, long and graceful where he was rough and lowly and tense. His gloves covered him well enough but the skin beneath it prickled and burnt with awareness, as if she were beneath the leather and touching him directly.  
   
She spared him by not looking at him as she did it for she would not bring his fear to the attention of the rest. He wished he could borrow her sweet calm. He felt lowly and worthless, that she could still stand to touch him after the oaths of men who should have been hers by right, her mother would not have allowed Jon to have risen so high. Their lord-father would have been ashamed.  
   
He remembered how he’d had to fight to curb his embarrassment at the Wall that all he could offer her were small cold rooms with pitiful hearths, poor ale and weak broth. Jon flushed and turned toward those who spoke. They had not seen. Jon was stayed.  
   
Sansa was so clever. He felt unbearably warm, unbearably aware. It was coarse of him to take comfort in her kindness when he could be no more unworthy of it. He was still not used to it, he could scarcely think over it. She waited, retracted her fingers and he had, despite his discomfort or because of it, the wild desperate desire of turning over his hand and catching hers. Keeping it.  
   
He wanted to hold onto that hand until it was not so strange, until he did not have to still like a well-beaten boy surprised when the hard fist did not come to knock him down. A foolish desire to be more familiar than he could hope. It was not there between them. Jon hadn’t the courage to be the one to put it there. When he’d seen her at the Wall his hand had sprung away from the rails and he’d taken a step back, the sight of her a blow. He had stopped before her, heart ramming in his throat all his wounds were ice, his mouth dry and Jon had suddenly been unsure but aching so much, not knowing what was allowed but aching so much and it was she who had come towards him first. Launched forward, Jon had gathered her up. Desperate, all his wounds burst open. He had not known her and he still knew her so very little, but she was the last remaining piece of home, of the old life. Sansa.  
   
He had been leaving the watch, he would have gone  _South_. She had given him the choice to make his own path and Jon had chosen her. He hadn’t cared about the men he'd thought to call his brothers anymore, he’d already died enough for them. His watch had ended. For Sansa he needed to live, to protect her lord-father’s house he needed to extinguish both Boltons  _and_  the Others. Now he had men, now he wanted them to take the war back to the wall he had been ready to abandon before Sansa arrived. He would have called her a sign, some intervention by the gods, but the gods had let his family die, had killed him, had allowed monsters like Ramsay to hurt his kin. Jon hadn’t known what to believe. Here he was, chosen once more for duties to great for him. There were wights, Karstarks, the ironbourne and fucking  _Littlefinger_  -  
   
 _Was about to drag the both of you in meself,_  Tormund had quipped later, but his usually ribald mirth was softer, quieter in the darkened hall. Flame glowed against his face, warmth and sleepy shadow reminiscent of the crags in the wall when the sun burned down in descent. _It was lucky you came in before she froze to death. Snow’s kin or not, looked about half-way there already._  
   
Jon keeps his arm still on the rest. Jon listens, he has been trusted with this duty, he will not shirk it. He will do what she has told him to do, but he  _will_  have answers.

* * *

He nearly turned his hand to take hers properly in his, but she let go of him before he could gather the nerve - if only to pick her knife and set it to the flaky pie. He both ached with desperation and relief, he didn't know which was worse.

 

The insides glistening with gravy. Kidney pie...like old nan used to make.

 

He had to look Sansa’s way, tentative and questioning. She had ordered the kitchens to strictly ration, but she had remembered...

 

His sister lifted her cup to hide her mouth where he thought he saw it curve in pleasure. It lifted his grim spirits somewhat. Sansa had taken charge of the management of the feast after all. It soothed the hollow ache that echoed with the death of their youngest brother, the death of so much else. It didn’t even matter to him what she’d done to Ramsay, though it troubled Ser Daavos a great deal when he’d reported it to Jon.  _He got much less than he deserved._

 

The onion knight ate near enough to the wildlings to help Tormund intervene should a brawl break out with the Northern houses, or to intervene should  _Tormund_  happen to the Northern Houses. Jon refused to regret sending the red woman away, she would have atleast been an added intermediary in these affairs, useful even.

 

But she had killed a young girl who had done nothing – you hung a boy, Jon Snow. You  _killed_  – Jon squashed that line of thought off with a grimace and tore himself away from that path to spare his sister a glance.

 

Sansa ate by Jon’s side as neat and precise with her knife as she would have been with needle and thread. No one would have known that she’d let hounds loose on Ramsay, though Jon’s advisors had already worried that soon there would be no soul who did not know of it. Sansa didn’t look at all like she’d killed a man.

_He wasn’t a man, Snow. He was a monster._  Jon had seen the rooms he had had her in, a far-flung, corner of a place in a high tower. Small, cold, and scarcely above being a hovel.

 

Jon had lifted the edge of the black mantle that draped Sansa’s bed as the old Stark servant who had called him flinched in the doorway. It wasn’t a mantle.

 

His lungs were thick with the stomach-turning sweetness of decay. Jon’s fingers had come away with blood, sticky with rot, veins still clinging to the underside of Shaggy dog’s skins. Sansa had not told him anything about what Ramsay had done to her but she had never needed to. The letter had a poison that agonized Jon’s imagination enough. He knew what men like Ramsay did.

Ramsay Bolton had killed their brother’s direwolf and draped its skin over Sansa’s bed. Given the crowded chaos of the fort Sansa was temporarily in Jon’s old rooms, sleeping fitfully with the red woman present by her side and one of  Signor of Thenn’s men watching the door.

 

His body ran hot with a blistering, breathless rage, he shook to the shoulders with it. If Ser Daavos hadn’t already told him what had happened in the kennels Jon would have marched down to break that grinning monster’s neck himself.

Ramsay Bolton would have won that battle, he would have brought his sister back to her bed. He would have raped her on direwolf skin and flayed her against Stark Stone. Jon’s knuckles had throttled what he held, blood welled anew from his torn fist.  _Take the skin to be treated,_ he’d said barely trusting himself to speak,  _burn the rest. Burn all of it._

 

He would lay the direwolf's skins to rest with Rickon's bones. All these lords swore themselves to Jon now...they had been defeated and ruled by Boltons at every turn, yet it took one young girl to finally crush that monster’s throat.

 

There is nothing to forgive, Jon had said.

 

But much he would not forget.

 

* * *

Growing up a bastard had given Jon some experience in observing folk, he never thought he’d be in a position where he would have to watch so many  _and_  be watched just as heavily by so many in turn. There had always been the occasional eye on him, the sceptical, curious stare alighting upon him even growing along side the rest of Stark’s children, thinking is this Solemn Ned Stark’s famous dishonour? His shame? Now as a King, they were given leave to pay more open, acute attention to him. He couldn’t keep his eyes on enough of them, lending half an ear to the Vale men who were raising tankards to him in the centre of the Great Hall and distracted by the Littlefinger’s lack of expression as he spoke to his own men.

 

Jon saw and saw. His eyes scanned their guests. Not all the Northern houses has arrived, the Manderly's absence was glaring to him. It would take a while for each house to come here, if any had the intention. The Karstarks were unsurprisingly absent, though he did not doubt he would be hearing from them soon. His eyes returned to the tables were the wildlings who hadn’t taken their drinking to the tents outside the walls were sitting far too close to the Knights of the Vale, and the Knights of the Vale seemed to think so too with their cold looks and the marked. frosty hostility that kept the space stale and empty between. Jon kept waiting for one of them to throw the first punch.

 

The Vale Knights, so well-garbed in their armour, well-trained and clean, ready for all the fighting Lysa Arryn had kept them from partaking in. Jon saw the lithe duplicitous snake of a lord’s eyes flicker towards Sansa for a moment so mere Jon might have as well imagined it, Jon followed that gaze.

 

Then an ear-cringing clamour drew back his attention, young Lord Cley Cerwyn was before their table and had obviously been speaking to his sister. By the stain blotching his doublet Jon derives with a flare of unexpected irritation that the young lordling has spilled wine over himself, the red pools over the place where Sansa has lain her neatly folded gloves. Blonde stubbled cheeks flushed red as beet, Lord Cerwyn looked like he wished nothing more than for the floor to open and swallow him whole. Half of Jon expected his sister, the young prim Sansa, to make a pinched grimace or admonish the lad as she would have Robb or Bran for muddying her dress but Sansa’s features were gentled by Lord Cerwyn’s discomfort and Sansa ignores her sodden gloves, rising.

 

Her words are soft and gentle, too quiet for Jon to hear but the Northern lord blushes to his ears. Jon tries not to think cruelly of him but his mood sours instantly. Oh, he’d been a brash sort just shortly before, hadn't he? Telling all of them to return to their holdfasts, scoffing at Jon but cowing under Lady Mormont’s sharp tongue, and then taking to knee.

 

Jon quietens the bitter voice. Cley Cerwyn was after all only a young man, afraid and trying to save his own. Now he shifts on his feet, clumsy and lumbering in a way that make his furs seem oversized. Sansa speaks to him and when she leans forward she refills his flagon herself, Jon does not hear what else she says to before Lord Cerwyn shambles a bow and leaves.

Had he not paid taxes to the Boltons? Jon knows his resentment unreasonable even as it mounts, he knows what happened to Cley Cerwyn’s family for refusing Boltons. He knows what little choice once can have.

 

_Seven Hells,_  Jon feels his temples start to throb. Exhausted and exasperated by the anger rising within him.

 

He was a boy to Jon for watching Sansa with such shy mortification, with his eyes guiltily trained on her figure even as he returns to continue eating with his kinsmen. At Castle Black Jon had taken some comfort in knowing Lady Brienne was by Sansa’s side, to say he had been impressed by the woman was a short way of putting it. She had Arya’s fierce strength as well as Sansa’s gentleness and idealism, she seemed to him some strange marriage of qualities, of his two sisters. What Sansa would have been if she loved bearing arms, or Arya if she cared for the more genteel knights and ladies in the songs.

 

Lady Brienne’s cool disdain was effective in making fools of men who were proving to be overly familiar. Except Tormund, who made no secret of his longing for the great knight, which daunted Jon more in that he doubted the wildling would survive with his life should Lady Brienne take proper offence.

 

Jon had once come upon her by Castle Black’s smithy, swinging down an axe and splitting firewood with a strength that made half the men gather to watch with horror and awe. They scattered like flustered hens once she noticed their shameless scrutiny. Lady Brienne had looked up and bore them with a pinched, mistrustful scowl.

Jon had remained and greeted her civilly, he’d been waiting for his own armour anyway. Tormund had audibly swallowed and the harsh, choppy exhale that left the wildling was so abundant in its hungry desire that Jon wanted to  _hit him._

 

Lady Brienne had narrowed her eyes and looked ready to do him great violence. She was a great towering woman and more than capable of flinging the wildling over her steel-clad back, lugging him up the stairs and hurling him off the highest edge of the wall. Tormund had looked unacceptably intrigued by the very prospect.

 

It had been exasperating and mildly amusing while it lasted, this dangerous flirtation and the impending fall out of his sister's sworn sword killing Jon's own closest non-kneeling wildling. Being in Winterfell again was much more troubling now, for it was filled once more with men.

 

Sansa who would suffer their attentions out of a sense of propriety or practicality, Lord Cerwyn had no business approaching to speak to her.

 

Even with Ghost, Lady Brienne, her stammering squire Podrick or some combination of the two shadowing his sister as she went where she willed, Jon had still worried madly. Sansa had still been a woman in a fort full of criminals and rapists, he’d nearly broken jaws, heart beating fast whenever she so much as crossed the snowy yard with more than a few eyes following her. More than a few eyes followed her now. Sansa avoided noticing with such nonchalance one would think she were blind but Jon good at watching, and a bastard born to hide. He watched Cerwyn, he watched Littlefinger, he watched Glover, Cassel – the only ones he could trust were the Free Folk and he still feared their proximity to the Northern Lords – Jon’s mind swirled, dizzy with suspicion. What he would give for a thousand eyes, it still would not be enough.

Lady Brienne was not yet by. He wished her back if only to soothe the worries he knew his sister must bear, Jon admired the knight and he hoped that for lord Cerwyn’s sake that he would think twice about approaching his sister.  Lady Brienne could take any man who presumed too much and snap him over her knee like kindling.

 

And for the sake of some of the other men too. Sansa was a beautiful woman, she did not acknowledge the attention even as Jon saw men fumble over themselves in such acute discomfort whenever they approached their table to speak to the Stark siblings during the meal. They talked to Jon with the distracted energy of men trying very hard not to look elsewhere, but look they did.

“Do not blame them for it,” Tormund had scoffed, sick of Jon glowering at the hearth in the Lord Commander’s chambers he just that day disowned the right to bed in, “You’d look too.”

 Aye, Jon was looking too. Not for the same reasons. An easy man could not blame them for looking, might have even thought it fair but even as he was spoken to Jon watched those who watched her, looking for any sign of hawkish intent. Sansa would never suffer the dishonour and the pain of being treated like a thing ever again, he did not care if these  bannermen promised to die for their cause, none of them had a right to her. He would not let anyone touch Sansa again, not unless she wanted them to.

His sister deserved the love of someone who would be kind and strong, someone who could honour her. Littlfinger for that matter…Jon tried as discretely as possible to keep the little man in his sights. While Jon has made arrangements, creating cover to move and (Jon felt uneasy keeping secrets from her, after everything.) hide Bolton chests, Littlefinger had been in the godswood with Sansa. Jon did not know which made him more uneasy, having him by or far away.

 

With the exception of Lady Mormont his sister was the only nobly born woman in the hall, and while Lady Mormont was followed everywhere by a retinue of steel bristling, scowling guards who Jon was sure would kill a man for simply breathing their lady’s name wrong…his sister had no one to protect her except Jon, and Jon could not watch her properly when he was too busy being an unwilling usurper.  _I’ll keep Ghost by her._

 

If he ever returned. He might let his eyes slip shut, to get the fevered snatches of wolf-sight, to know where the beast was, but he did not dare do so in the hall.

 

_I am no warg,_  he told himself and drank from the tankard. Much had changed since he'd risen from death, he had had wolf-dreams before but always in his sleep. Now the visions were immediate, that he need only reach for them to  _see._

 

"I think I'll retire."

 

Jon snapped his attention to Sansa, her serenity astounding him. His insides twisted. "Are you alright?"

 

How could she bear the sight of him?

 

"Yes," she said quietly.

 

"We have to talk," Jon told her lowly, "You have to tell me why - "

 

"It's no matter, Jon - "

Sansa had looked so well-put together, even as she saw the stubbornness pull at his mouth. Her gloves still lay in the pool of wine, she hadn’t even moved them. It struck him just how much she had changed, to not care at all. Her skin cold and clear with her alertness, her attention...She was tired though, perhaps even more tired than he was. Then her face eased with relief, exhaustion. “Father would have been so proud of you.”

That made him swallow and glance aside of her. He didn’t deserve any of it. “I don’t…” he whispered weakly, his voice strained with fresh agony. “It should be you.”

“No,” her voice was harder, determined. “It should be you.”

“Why? “ his words were hard with need, he needed to know why she had done this, why she hadn't let him refuse them. "Sansa, I can't - "

 

“I  _won’t_  argue in the Great Hall with you, Jon. You’re my eldest brother, you are a Stark, it’s  _meant_  to be you.”

The steel in her voice made him chance once more to look at her, Jon wished everyone in the Great Hall could disappear. He needed to speak to her desperately, he needed answers. He was surprised with how much he wanted it, wanted to sit by the fire with his sister and not be afraid of looking like less of a King for taking comfort in her taking his hand. He searched her eyes, did she wish to take it back now? Calling him a Stark? If she had known it would have trapped her into someway thinking he should have more right to her claim than she did as Eddard Stark’s trueborn daughter? Jon searched her eyes but he only found a stubbornness in them. Like she might hit him if he corrected her and told her he wasn’t – he wasn’t really a Stark.

 

She raised a brow sharply, and Jon felt himself nod once, aware that anything short of cowed agreement would be unwelcome while in the current company, heeding her desire for discretion.  _For now._

 

Then she rose. Jon promptly stood in turn as - with the loud clamour of benches  jerking back and heels scraping onto the floor - did every man in the hall.

She turned towards him, her mouth bent, Sansa bowed her head. “Your grace.”

The motion was proper though the corner of her mouth twitched in restraint of some amusement, and her eyes a wry gleam that no one else could mark gave her away to Jon. She was teasing him, relief flooded through him in such a rush it confused the immediate mortification of hearing the title coming from her. He would have emphatically refused her such formality, but Jon’s face softened, his chest loosened and he could only smile tiredly at her. “My lady.” he bowed his head, and more quietly. "We  _will_  speak later."

 

She refrained from replying, instead she turned to the rest of the men who had stood, every inch a lady of winterfell a smile of gracious restraint their way. Jon watched her, he watched the expressions of solemn respect on these men’s faces, well-schooled in the arts of greeting and bidding good-bye to ladies. He watched and had his ready suspiciousness of any eager lords mollified and set aside when Ser Davos who was not bid so much as bourne up by some wise instinct, came forward to offer Sansa his arm. Tormund observed with deep amusement, the genteel courtesies that fascinated him and the rest of the Free Folk. Those that had been standing, stood, those who had been sitting remained seated, but they did raise their glasses to Lord Snow’s sister which was plenty respect enough from them. He watched Cley Cerwyn stand straight as possible, like a proud cockerel demanding measure and watched him sway lightly.

He saw littlefinger and the Knight’s of the Vale, and Jon could not tell what the man was thinking or feeling but would wait to see whether he would disappear soon after or not at all too. Lyanna Mormont leaned forward, elbow propped on the pommel of her sword, and jerked a single acknowledging nod Jon’s way. Ten years old and already a kingsmaker, Jon nearly laughed at the absurdity.

Jon watched Sansa leave with the onion knight. The bannermen –  _our_  bannermen – retook their seats once Jon did, and murmuring, returned to their talk and their jests. There was no music this was not a time for celebration, but there was plenty to drink, and several tongues loose. He snapped his eyes on them, ears keen, waiting for the first crass remark. It did not come.

 

Jon’s fists unclenched on the table, when Lord Glover approached him once more Jon found himself suddenly wildly out of depth. He hadn’t fully realized what discomfort he might feel now he could take no comfort in Sansa’s absence. He was afraid of saying the wrong thing, he was waiting to be unmasked as an imposter, a usurpser. For someone to cut him with the word bastard.

 

But Lord Glover bowed his head solemnly instead, "Your Grace."

 

There were urgent matters to speak of, he knew. The sooner he addressed them, the sooner he could go to her.

 

He had seen Sansa, evasive and careful - but he would know the truth of all this soon enough. Jon resolved, straightening in his seat. He would know of it tonight.

 

_You will not hide from me, sister._


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> had to cut this chapter shorter coz it's a monster otherwise. my next ones will be longer than this, but not as monstrously long as my old chapters because i'm realizing that longer chapters = lots of unnecessary padding + verbiage. and short chapters? = more frequent updates and the plot moving faster along. also i'm busy and done apologizing for inconsistencies by overcompensating with huge ass, exhausting updates. this is just better for everyone. enjoy!

It was my job to pour blood through a funnel

to absorb the arterial backlash, become version  
of suicide. The paper sheets rustled  
in the clear breeze. We all spoke sotto voce.  
From the back row, someone sang,

 _If I give my heart to you.  
_ And all the while, the ghost of Gertrude Stein  
was whispering in my ear:  _Circle one_.  
 _You were made for something bitter, bitter, better._

**Open Heart Surgery,** _Mary Jo Bang_

* * *

 

 

They were, unsurprisingly, unhappy about his decision to keep the wildlings around.

Tormund bore his teeth in his poorest approximation of a grin whenever any such lord looked his way. The Northern lords priorities were no different from any other man's, even a wildling; food, security, vengeance and independence.

Jon did not know how one could achieve all. Many northern sons had died for Robb Stark and killed at the Red Wedding, held hostage by Lannisters, lost and unaccounted for...Many had lost daughters to Ramsay Bolton's hunts, raped and torn to pieces….Alliser Thorne had sneered and once told him that he could still smell summer on Jon Snow, a greenboy - but what remained once all the green boys were killed? Fifth sons suddenly found themselves heirs, wives widowed and daughters losing betrothed after betrothed to new calamity. Lithe, cowardly Lord Cley and the shifty-eyed small Flint (who can be no older than a boy who has only started squiring), matched with old men with grey in their beards and likely more gout than battle strength. Mismatched tools, broken or dull.

Many had died with the Young Wolf. Cerwyn, Tallhart, Flint, Hornwood...   
  
They wanted fiercely their vengeance and that the North should once more be beholden only to Northerners. He read their sigils and their shields and though a bastard had had little use for learning them he had been alongside Robb under Maester Luwin's tutelage and knew them all.

Jon saw which of the great families were present, which were absent, and which surprised him. The Karstarks and the Umbers were absent, both being traitors - he saw Flint, Cerwyn but did not see Hornwood nor Manderly. _ The snows are coming fiercely and your victory is fresh yet, _ Lord Glover had whispered upon approach, Sansa had already left.  _ More will arrive on the morrow. _

As though Jon were a tyrant looking for men to kneel. They asked him more questions, what did he mean to do  about the traitors? There would be trials in the next few days and, noting the aggravation with which the men around him spoke of those who had lost the battle, Jon ascertained there would be few pardons and a great deal of executions. With their tempers so was it a wonder that it relieved him to know that he would not have to manage the chaos of Ramsay’s trial, had he still lived?

No one spoke of Ramsay’s death, but whether that was because they knew his sister had played her hand in it or assumed it was Jon himself who had, Jon did not know.

When would he march South? Jon flattened his palm over his cup when a servant made to pour his wine and uncovered it instead for water. Where would the wildlings stay?

The wildlings would be welcome on Stark lands and he expected the Northern lords to cooperate with settling them for now.

He had moved down into one of the tables, choosing Lyanna Mormont's. The Mormont men who had occupied it had dutifully vacated it to give their seats to the lords of the other houses and done so with pride.  _ They fought and bled, it is their honour and mine to acknowledge it. _

Troubling, was the matter of the Hornwood estate. Which, he understood, had many vying for ownership. From the Manderlys to the Talharts. Jon would rather they have talked on the white walkers, alarmed, he deflected where he could and avoided making any promises, careful of revealing answers to questions he had yet to properly ruminate on and had attempted instead to divert the conversation towards talk of the Wall and the true danger beyond instead.

_ I can make none of them promises, _ neither had they received news from the South to know of what was going on in King’s Landing. The only party as South as there was to be hoped for were the Vale men, Jon thought wildly and looked to see that Littlefinger was still there remained sitting, that he had not once spoken during all these proceedings. Strange, he had seemed the sort of man who liked to hear himself speak, Jon thought darkly.

The thought of asking anything of this man aggravated him, to know what he had done, but there were greater things at stake than Jon’s resentment of him. If even Sansa could stand to be civil to the man who sold her to the Boltons, then Jon had to bite down and follow suit. “Lord Baelish, the battle would have been lost had you not arrived,” Jon announced stonily, keeping his anger close. “What news have you from the South?”

Lord Baelish bowed his head elegantly and incrementally. “The last I have heard is that Cersei Lannister is a prisoner of the High Septon, the trial should have been done with now, though we have received no word but that will be remedied soon enough.”

He spoke humbly and gently, a non-threatening courtliness but it did not pass notice that he had acknowledged the North’s gratitude as little as Jon had expressed it. Jon was not ready to voice thanks to him, he nodded tersely at the Vale men. “I expect we will.”

“Your Grace, if I may,” Lord Baelish cut in gently as Jon moved to speak on the threat over the Wall. “We do know of the Riverlands…” sure he had everyone’s attention now, Lord Baelish’s stare was so unassuming it suggested only innocent truth rather than calculated discord. “Lannister forces, joined by the Freys, have retaken Riverrun.”

The Northerners bristled in attention and Jon’s tight grip on the table slackened. Sansa’s sworn shield had gone there to ask for help, Lady Brienne and young Podrick. “When they did not come to aid the battle, we assumed the worst had happened. What of the Blackfish?”

“He is slain, Your Grace.”

There were gasps and noises of disbelief, Jon had heard of the Blackfish’s military skill so often he’d seemed a legend of old - his courage and his cunning on the field had been a thing of reknown, to hear him perished was a blow to the Northeners and a blow to Jon. The man had been Sansa’s relation and would likely have had as little care for Jon’s appointment as Lady Catelyn would have, this….this might pain his sister greatly - and make her worry for the safety of her sworn-shield and squire.

The disbelief turned to anger, the Northerners looked to him expectantly. The wounds they had bourne in the Riverlands, fighting for Robb Stark had been lanced open, they wanted blood, they wanted answer. “I am grieved to hear it.”

“We have had our fill of grief!” someone yelled though Jon could not ascertain who, and many men agreed. They wanted blood.

“Our concern now is the North,” Jon decided, casting them a firm look such that they were driven to silence. “We did not win Winterfell back to lose it to the Others.”

"If King Snow says it to be so," the little Flint said slowly, seriously in a way that felt maddeningly patronizing for it came from men who had not yet seen enough of the terror to believe in it. "Then it must be true."   
  
Lyanna Mormont had given a mighty scoff and rolled her eyes. "It had better be, to be so extraodinary." she murmurred, "and a great deal of the extrodinary has happened today."   
  
He met her eye, but if Lyanna Mormont was trying to imply something other than what she plainly spoke he could not for the life of him derive it. She smirked and pounded her fist on the table. "You'll be wanting men. Look sharp, the rest of you - there's an opportunity, and much to be made up for."   
  
Which made some of the lords protest, defensive and others fairly shout - arguing.

There was much to think about here, he could trust no one’s counsel here fully without confessing to them all his doubts - and a leader, his lord-father had said, must keep some distance between he and his men, if only for the illusion of strength. He could not afford to doubt himself in front of them.

He needed to speak to Sansa to know the truth of her actions tonight, and to receive counsel he trusted. He knew his own thoughts on many of these matters, but he had thought as confidently of himself before too - when he’d been wrong in the past.

He felt near mad from guarding his tongue and giving his ear to these men, at the wall he often spoke plainly and firmly but he doubted these noble lords would appreciate such dark wit. More like they'd think him rude or insolent. He struggled to give them the attention due but his ribs ache, his wounds raw and the few moment he'd managed to steal for sleep seemed to have done little less than deepen his exhaustion.

Lord Baelish had said his piece, Jon noticed his men now.

Where the lords of the North were the scraped remains and new necessities salvaged from the war, the Vale Knights were different. Their lady had refused them from joining the War and they sat about, watching him - skilled and healthy, their overwhelming victory had only added to their careless confidence and vigour, they composed their faces seriously and listened to what was being discussed, and though Jon knew the Eyrie was legendary for its well-trained soldiers he wondered cynically if these men would treat all the wars to come as childsplay still and look so fresh by the end of it.

Without them the North would have been lost. Their armour polished to catch even the dullest of light, their lords young and handsome and most importantly  _ Littlefinger's _ .

His patience quickly fraying over the grind of their talk of the South and their insistency on the North's independence from the seven kingdoms, he struggled to keep his temper in check. He knew the incredible importance of such matters, only what vexed him was that no one wished to also address the matter of wights, the entire reason the Free Folk they so despised had fled from beyond the Wall in the first place. The Northern lords…they promised men but did not properly believe.   
  
Anger had coiled tightly in his chest, if these were men of the Night's Watch discussing matters Jon would have cared little for this prattle and wasted no time in harshly admonishing them. These were not his brothers but men older than he, who had respected his lord-father. He could not treat them with quite the same forthrightness, he would not take the risk of offending them this early on when they might give him the resources and men their war North desperately needed.   
  
_ They haven't seen what you have seen _ , and it was this that let him calm, to listen to them. It worried him that they did not know. 

At the Watch it didn't matter if you were a Stark bastard or a Lannister sworn noble, in the Black you spoke directly and frankly. Landed nobles in the Black were no longer nobles, they no longer had land, they were all the same and all equals. Here it was different.   
  
Jon spoke little and short, careful of saying anything foolish. He kept his composure well for they had made him their king but a part of him, deeply hidden, still felt like a child unexpectedly called before his father's table about some matter while Lady Catelyn balefully ignored him.   
_   
_ __ It was easier when Sansa was here, Jon had taken reassurance he'd had no right taking in her presence. He had even less right to that now having acquired men in the aftermath of a battle he would have lost were it not for her intervention.   
  
Jon had tried to be angry with her but he could not manage it. On the ramparts she had looked finer in her furs than she had in all her southron dresses as a child. She looked Northern and cold, a mask that cracked and shattered when she turned towards him with a sincerity that disarmed him entirely. She had called him Stark.   
  
He remembered her as a child always giggling with Jeyne Poole, pretty in the soft way that girls were meant to be. In all the ways she should have still been had they been in a better world. And he worried for her. They had not spoken of what had happened to each other apart from the few happy things, tourneys and Sam, or the little they had shared in a past when Jon and Sansa knew each other very little too. She spoke vaguely of her life in King's Landing and he of his life at the Wall. Jon knew she kept much from him. He understood why. It was not so much a matter of trust, only that there was much too much to speak about, to relive, deaths too fresh and injuries too deep to properly speak on yet. Wounds that would weep with prodding.   
  
He would ask her, he'd told himself so many times. But at the Wall every time he came to sit by her, when she was by the fire her eyes far away, the flames a red lick on her hands pulling thread, the patience and the calm…her hands had been pale, her long fingers had shown the flute thin line of bone. She looked too cold, smiling hesitantly at him like she was trying to remember how her mouth might make the shape, and Jon could not then bear the thought of interrupting this peace, of crowding her in such a way. He waited for her to come to him. But they only spoke of Winterfell and the safe little of what they had done apart.   
  
She did not ask him about his death, or Ygritte, or Lord Commander Mormont, he wondered what she had heard and what she might make of it, but she never brought it up. They spoke of Bran's love of climbing and Rickon's unruliness, and Theon when father first found out about their first visit to the brothels in Wintertown. Jon had felt a grin break his jaw and Sansa even smiled when they weren't speaking of battles she needed fought.   
  
The Wall was a cold prison but the hovel he'd given Sansa had suddenly been the warmest place in the world, her company surprisingly easy and unmasking. Sansa was soothing when she wanted to be. They shared conversation and silence both, Jon watching the glow of firelight in her hair, her fingers deft around the silver glint of needle. When he drifted into warm silence and she bent her head over her work, the pale elegant curve of her neck had revealed itself. Sansa had neatly snapped thread between her teeth and raised her eyes. Jon would frown later, heady from confusion at his own reaction. His heart had rammed against his ribs, he had torn his gaze away.   
  
Growing up he had avoided looking at Lady Stark, unsure and unwilling to catch her gaze. He felt it always on him, a harrowing, acidic stare of restrained contempt. She was not his mother, and Sansa he felt instinctually that he had just as little right to look at her as well. But he could not stop. It had been so long since he'd seen her he still marvelled whether she was real or not. His haughty little sister was even less familiar to him than she had ever been, there was still that primness but it was the new things that struck him; Sansa's unwavering resilience, her cool pride – perhaps she had sounded like her mother, reminding Lord Glover of his obligations. Family, duty, honour. But there was that edge of steel, a cold stone in her that reminded him of Lord Stark, blade in his hand, strong and just. The ferocity was all her own. She didn't look Southern then but like a queen of Winter, the red of her hair like the old blood of weirwood leaves, her head raised proudly, her tone even, passing judgment, cordial but unafraid of being an executioner should it be required of her.   
  
Perhaps these things had always been there and Jon had not noticed them, perhaps it was the suffering they had endured that brought them out, Jon did not know.   
  
He told himself he would ask later, he would give her this space, this moment of peace.

But he would speak to her this night of what she had given up to him.

* * *

 


	6. Chapter Six

I think of all the eyes  
not meant to see me.  
When I was five I learnt how to  
leave my body.  
Now I seem to have a hard time  
staying. Sometimes, I get stuck  
in the hovering.

—   **Stuck** ,  _Sarah DesRosiers-Legault,_

 

* * *

 

 

 

Jon managed to slip away sometime later. His head was heavy, still spun with the evening, with the battle. They were in the second part of the night and the northern lords had begun to retire when Jon realized he had lost sight of Lord Baelish in the shuffle.

Jon had then promptly taken to his feet and made his excuses, trusting the persistence of ambitious masters of coin better than their honour for he had no intention of leaving Sansa alone with such a man ever again.

So much had happened in the space of a day. His side protested as he came by the opening of the stairway leading down into the dark tombs, every wound suddenly fresh, flared along him like he was feeling the knives go into him, through him, all over again. Jon stopped before the crypts, his thumbs tucked tensely into his fists.

Long ago he used to play here with his brothers and sisters. Nan would tell them that deep in the collapsed lower levels of the crypts there were rats and spiders big as dogs. He'd covered himself in flour and jumped out the shadows. Arya's scream, angry even when she was afraid, he remembered how she'd struck out at him while he'd spluttered, wheezing with laughter, too wound with it to defend himself against her angry smacks. Jon had laughed and laughed. He'd laughed till he cried.

As he'd grown older there were fewer games here. Robb wanted a sparring partner and to go hunting more like a man instead of a child, Jon was demanded frequently by his brother when he could have otherwise just as easily been forgotten. Over time it had become something of a relief that he hadn't needed to go down there so often.

At feasts he had taken his meals with the blacksmith and the mason while his family ate above him. Play-fighting with Robb, he'd had the brazen stupidity of shouting 'I am the Lord of Winterfell!' and his brother had told him that that could not be, that he would never be Lord of Winterfell. It had only gotten harder to ignore that he was a bastard, what place had he among the noble dead of the Stark? He was not even worthy of eating at their table.

_They would have buried you in the lichyard with the servants._

Shame had set him away and with it there was fear. He'd dreamt of the crypts, the dark narrow passageway, the stone Kings watching him just as cold as Lady Stark, and saying nothing at all to him. Their stone wolves, their iron swords bared across their knees. In the dream something had told him he had to go down, into the darkness, deeper still. He dreaded it now too.

Jon Snow had no place amongst the Starks, living or not.

As a newly made king he felt his unworthiness thrice fold. His laugh was a soft bark on the empty grounds, he stood before the stairs spiralling into the earth. If he’d had no right to be there before then it was audacious of him now to descend into this place as a King. What would the dead think to see him pass among them, a bastard crowned in the undeserved fealty of the northern houses?

At the Wall he hadn't been afraid of dying, he'd fought with all the blood in his body, till he was hoarse and weak and keening with the wound of living. He'd fought and he'd gone to war and each time he returned alive he'd done it knowing he'd have to go back out again. His only consolation then had been knowing they would burn his corpse to keep him from becoming a wight. Such a thing would have spared him the humiliation of sending a body back to a father who would not be remiss to bury his bastard son elsewhere.

The crypts were only for true Starks.

_I am a dead man, walking down into the house of the dead. They might keep me, would I fight them?_

Aye, he had fought and he had died, and there had been nothing. There was nothing there. He'd thought in death there might have been at least reprieve, that perhaps the gods would make themselves apparent and lay him to rest, but there had been nothing when he closed his eyes. His breath sharding in his torn lungs, mincing and digging in his throat like shattered glass, lying in the snow spluttering like a child, still surprised even as his back turned icy with his own blood, even as it pooled around him and he saw it steam above him, steam as he'd seen blood steam when other men died. He had seen flashes of home, Arya, his brothers as he struggled for tearing breath, Ygritte mocking him and Sansa combing Lady's fur – but when Jon Snow had closed his eyes and died, there had been nothing.

Was there nothing beneath the crypts too? Now that he had come back from the dead were all his dreams merely dreams? Surely they had always felt too present, watching him with stone eyes, sentient and silent. He did not know any other truth, he only knew what he had seen. The nothingness that awaited him should he fall again.

There was nothing after this life and perhaps that was better. He didn't know. He was torn between two impulses, never more apparent than when he'd been fighting against the Boltons, his body had hungered for the resolute silence of the dark and yet it roused such terror in him too.

He was death-kissed now, something in him had twisted in the dark, a fine hook of silver cold that dragged him down that whispered it might be better to die, _wouldn't he like to die?_ And then the terror would pull him back, aware of the breath in his body, the irregular, hard pound of his pulse in his throat and Jon wanted to _live._ He had to make the most of this. The Now…there would be no rest beyond the grave, just a black, bottomless nothing.

When the Bolton cavalry had charged he'd thought himself ready to die, mad with grief and rage. His brother thorned in arrow fletchings and trampled by an army that far outnumbered theirs, that had outmanoeuvred him. Sansa had been right about it all.

Their brother was always going to die, not even Lord Snow could save him. In the crush, the stampede, gored in mud, the white blare and black rush of noise, men screaming, the horses, his heart bludgeoning in his head, he couldn't breathe. He had tried to rise but he had been pinned down, breaking beneath the boots of his own men, wheezing through churned wet earth. He'd been so heavy, his chest compressed, he could not breathe. He'd thought that he should lie there and die as he was meant to. It was too hard to rise up again, his brother was dead, the battle lost, wildlings and good men dying for their lost cause. He couldn't breathe. He would never see Winterfell again. He couldn't imagine it anymore without Robb, without his brother's warm, big laughter, without Arya who was lost and like to be dead in a ditch somewhere. Had she too drowned in mud? He couldn’t imagine home without Rickon, without Bran. Even Theon who had hated him but taught him how to shoot a bow and teased him about dancing with Lysa Mormont so long ago when she had been too wilful to let Jon refuse her. What was Winterfell without his kin? All dead, why should he return there?

He thought of Sansa and prayed she had ridden away, he'd tried to send word with one of the men but they'd been cut down before Jon could finish shouting the order. He thought of his sister and more than her he thought of what was before him. What he had promised, to protect her, to take back their home. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't die beneath the boots of men like a dog, he _would not_ die yet, not when there was nothing in death. He slapped at earth, his fingers slicked, slipped off the top of rock, shield, urgent and struggling, his chest was fire, black spots spinning in his vision. The crush of so many men afraid, pulverizing him, Jon Snow snarled, Jon Snow was afraid of death, they forced him on all sides, he climbed and pushed and shoved, flotsam in an iron sea, an animal forced through the jaws of a steel trap. He surfaced, a guttural gasp scything up from his lungs, grabbing onto the shoulders of men as they crushed him on all sides, his ribs screaming. The sun had been weak but it still blinded anew. His throat near tearing with the pull of air, bloody. Trapped in the throng, pinned above, crowded and crushed. He would not drown but he might as well have for they were trapped. Ringed by Bolton men with spears, forcing the crush further inward, Jon grappled and gasped and knew that they were dead. Dead in the snow, or dead in the mud, smeared in shit and the blood of his brothers. Dead.

He searched frantically but he could not move. He floated, he felt his ribs protest from the force. He struggled to breath. He looked up and was blinded, dizzy with little breath. He looked around him and saw the faces of men feral in fear, backing from spears like cornered animals, anticipating the horror of their own deaths. And then Jon Snow saw a woman on a horse, too far away from him. He could not see her face but he could not mistake the red and gold of her hair, catching weak sunlight, catching fire.

He saw her. His gaze fogged up, blurred, Gods help him he could no better breathe the foul air above then than he'd been able to beneath, in the mud. He saw her. He felt as if all his ribs were breaking, _Sansa._

He scarcely heard the horns, they seemed to come from so far away. Soon he had heard horses, rallying yells, and spearing toward him, a great flag. An _army_ . He could not see her anymore then. He would not see her until he'd been gripped in the madness of his own rage bearing down on that monster. Rickon still yet a child , killed like game. The smug smirk, the wildlings who had trusted Jon and been savaged for Jon, for Wun Wun with the arrow bristling in the hollow of his eye, launched from a bow barely ten feet away. The last cowardly act of malice from a man who would die doing what he did best, cruel even when he was lost. _Your sister is a fine woman._

Jon barrelled into him with a wet yell and the noise Ramsay made was one of surprise. Not of fear, or pain, but _surprise_. Jon went blind, his arm snapped back.

That wry, ugly letter. Winterfell is mine, bastard. Come and see. You will watch as I skin the living, you will watch as my men take turns raping your sister.

Come and see. Ramsay Bolton, Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North.

_Send her to me, bastard._

He hated him for the desecration of their home, for all he had done and taken and maimed. For the cold nothing of Sansa's look, so vacant of warmth, telling him that their brother was dead either way. For forcing him to hate Sansa in that moment when she was only saying what was true. It shouldn't have had to be true, it wouldn't have been true had there not been creatures like Ramsay in the world, fouling everything they touched.

For what he had done to her that would have made her better rely on her own knife than on Jon, to never feel safe again. For all the dead these usurpers had made of his kin when Jon had been helpless, the last and bound far North by his oaths so he could not go to them, could not save or aid them. _I should have gone to them, bugger the oaths, I should have gone._ For Robb with the snow melting in his coppery hair, for horse-faced Arya his little sister, an outsider like him, who he had loved more than he had ever loved anyone. Bran shattered at the bottom of the tower and Sansa in the cold still, how she had recoiled in the tent when he had raised his voice. Her eyes had been bright, the colour high in her cheeks, something animal in her fear, something about her that scooped all his insides out.

Even in his attempts at being careful and delicate, he seemed to never have gotten it right. He felt keenly that after Joffrey, Lannisters , Boltons the untold, unspoken horrors of what she had faced at their hands that he could never make it right for her again.

They were all gone, slain by those better at being sly and cruel. All betrayed. If he'd known that day would have been the last he'd see his brothers and sisters, he'd have held on, he'd have refused to go and begged Lady Stark's forgiveness for his audacity. He should have sought Sansa out and made a proper goodbye, even if he'd have been assuming too much, even if she didn't care, even if she called him her bastard half-brother. He would never have gone to the Wall.

If...If, if , _if._

There was only now, the now where Jon pressed his wrist against his brow, his gloves cold against his temples - he felt nearly in a fever, in the wake of so many ‘ifs’. He wouldn’t be the fool Sansa feared him to be, he would know what to do now.

He stared down into the darkness of the crypts and let out a breath that chalked and shuddered in the air.

He still needed to see her, he knew immediately when they made him King. Sansa had looked up to him with a smile that had warmed better than any of the Northern Houses shouting his name. The rest of the evening she had attended to the guests. She had made a strange spectre in her fine dress leaving, moving through a sea of mail and speaking gently with war-hardened men when they approached, ever a lady. They could never have beaten that out of her.

He had taken pride and strength in seeing her, composure less made of that steely grace she'd borne the refusal of Northern House's to serve and more of the grace of a lady of winterfell, the confidence of belonging. Jon had belonged to few places in his life. At the Wall he’d belonged until betrayal forced him out, but he had been made Lord Commander and felt truly for the first time in his life that he might serve a purpose greater than the dishonour of his birth. Now he realized that after all these disasters, he wanted to do right by his sister and their family. Bugger the approval of the lords, he wanted to be worthy of their home, of the name she sought to give him that her lord-father would not have allowed.

Bugger the disapproving dead - he may have been a Snow but he belonged to the Stark’s, bastard or no, their legacy was dear to enough to him to die a thousand times over for. Robb’s legacy and Arya’s and Bran’s and Rickon’s and _Sansa’s._

 _I don't want to go_ , but Rickon is down there. Jon's knuckles burnt in protest when his hand closed tightly around the pommel of his sword.

The snow was falling still, silencing Winterfell, dust stirred under his feet and he followed the wet imprint of smaller soles not quite dusted over by the fresh snow. It grew darker as he descended, like he was moving into the deep heart of the earth, his breath a quiet, harsh scrape in his ears.

At the bottom of the stair he halted and saw the amber glow of lantern light shine weakly at the end of the path. Feathers scuttled across a stray cold curl of wind, bird droppings festered, splotched on the stone walls and the shoulders of the old kings of winter. It had fallen into disrepair under Bolton occupation and it surprised Jon that that was the full extent of the damage. He had expected to see the old statues defaced or ruined, vandalised. Perhaps, if Ramsay had killed his father earlier he would have attended to what Roose had tactfully left alone.

Jon bent his head and approached, quietly and carefully, as if to avoid their stares. He needn't have bothered for he found that this was no dream. He felt no watchful eyes, no heavy scrutiny, just the soft, hollow howl of the wind, the hushed drum thud of his boots and the stale, dim stink of an underground place. Cold, dank, abandoned.

He cautiously skirted the debris, trying not to crunch on stone or anything that might make too much noise. There were few lights here, put up by those wildlings who he had tasked with bringing Rickon's body down. A poor, waxing illumination that seemed to tremble over the stones like a lapping wave. The wave rippled and caught in his sister's hair where she stood at the end of the path, before the very place her lord-father had been making preparations for his children to be buried.

Sansa stared fixedly into the dark ahead of her but it was her hands that gave her away. She worked the heart of her palm with a thumb, her breath a soft cloudy fog. It was late. She should be abed.

She hadn't seen him yet. Ser Daavos had escorted her to her rooms, yet she had returned to see their brother. How could you have ever thought her cold?

She was convincing sometimes in her level-headedness. She was bone-white from the cold, she should have been abed, before a fire. The snow had melted in her hair, wetly it shone. She exhaled, shaky and raw, almost took a step back, to turn away, to go –

She turned her head, "Jon?"

Guiltily, he shifted to a stop.

She repeated his name with such agonized softness that it pierced something in Jon, a sharp unfathomable urgency ringing alive, pulling upwards, hummed in him. It felt like if he did not move it would slit his throat. Sansa looked to him and she looked once more like her much younger self, searching desperately, abandoned in the middle of a game by her siblings.

 _My sister,_ Jon wondered, heart swollen at the need tender in her voice. She sounded like she needed him, the way she might have sounded if he were Robb.

Close, he saw her eyelashes thick with tears she quickly blinked away. Her mouth twitched into a watery smile once she was sure of his approach and he saw the column of her throat move above her furs, Sansa swallowing back the same complicated grief that twisted in him.

He did not trust himself to touch her, to take more from her, so they stood there side by side, looking into the dark alcove that would soon hold Rickon's likeness in stone. Their brother's corpse lay hidden beneath grey slab, trampled near unrecognizable.

It was a dark place forever in a sort of twilight gloom. They used to play among the shades, in Jon's dreams the crypts had been crowded with the heavy gazes of a thousand shades, so close he'd be afraid of turning and seeing what saw him. In the waking world it was empty, bereft of anything. No ghosts to judge him, the only thing real or alive were he and Sansa – the dusty air, the feathers collecting on the edge of their cloaks, the brass and bronze of torchlight in her hair and how cold he was.

Sansa sniffled once, her eyes clear but her nose was still red. Tears trembled in her throat, but steadily were banished as her voice gained the pleasing warmth of a courtier. "You did well, Jon. Are you alright?"

“No,” Jon said, grieved to be the one to. “I bring you terrible news.”

Her face paled but her mouth went grim and she nodded.

“It is your Uncle,” Jon confessed, pained. “Riverrun has been retaken by the Lannisters, the Blackfish was killed then.”

She looked away. “I hardly knew him.” she said quietly, at length, and her smile was poor in its irony and grief. She straightened, “Lady Brienne...after her last raven brought me word that my Uncle could not fight for us...I have not received another word from her…”

“She may have survived. There’s no telling, she might have escaped - “

“Or she might be dead too,” Sansa said, a lack of movement in her face as though death had closed around her and to thaw was to open herself to more grief, more death. “Thank you, Jon.”

He had not slept well in the few hours he had allowed himself, his head ached from dealing with the Northern lords, his body was sore, heavy with exhaustion but there was life prickling through him, like spit on a wound. He hurt but he lived. “Sansa…”

But she swiftly interrupted him. "You didn't see a maester."

He swallowed thickly, Sansa's voice was still pleasant but it was an accusation he had not expected or at all a matter he had thought on. Jon had not seen a maester since before he'd been murdered by his brothers, he did not know how to explain his wounds to anyone, nor any desire to explain. Melisendre had examined them and he had attended to binding them himself. He didn't want a Bolton maester or one of Littlefinger’s maesters gawping at him, telling Jon what Jon feared most, that though he breathed he was naught more than an walking corpse.

The battle had given him scrapes and cuts that he'd flushed out with hot wine and cauterized on his own, as he'd have done at Castle Black. There had been no need to see anyone.

Sansa's eyes were on him, her stare steady and unnervingly blue. Jon shifted, shrugged, a smile briefly bending his mouth in an attempt to reassure her. "I wasn't hurt."

"Jon – "

"He was busy," He interjected. Hearing the sharpness of his words Jon forced himself to soften his tone. "…I didn't have much to look at that I couldn't attend to myself. It's I who should be nagging, you’re supposed to be abed. You’re supposed to be…” he trailed of weakly. “ _why did you stop me?_ "

It was a wasted whisper, a plea.

"As should you," Sansa returned with her old, quiet bossiness, ignoring him completely. "You needn't have your wildlings following me, you know. I was hardpressed to ask if they were going to tuck me in as well, with how keen they've been."

“Don’t,” Jon snapped, weary. “We have to talk about this.”

“I agree. I don’t mind a guard so much, I just don’t want to be spied on.”

“Sansa - “

She faced him then, pain flashed through her eyes. Unimaginably exhausted was Sansa's responding sigh. She looked so cold, she shouldn't have been out here at this time. "Don't be silly."  
  
He scrubbed a hand down his face, just as exhausted. "You're Robb's sister, you are father's trueborn daughter, it should be you."   
  
"You're my eldest brother," Sansa cut off, coolly sensible. It was that word, _brother_ , that made his lungs clamp, that stoppered his breath. More than 'Stark' did. _It was brother_ . "You're the rightful choice, the sensible choice."   
  
"Gods, Sansa, I'm a –"   
  
"You're a Stark."   
  
"I'm – " he spluttered, "I'm illegitimate – "   
  
"Bastards have ruled before," Sansa replied with some heat, impatience lending her words an underlying sharpness. "though we did not call them so." Joffrey, Tommen, even Ramsay. "It didn't matter to anyone here and even if it did, it doesn't matter to _me_ ."   
  
How they had changed. Jon didn't know what to do with this Sansa. In truth she had never been unkind to him, only indifferent, condescending in silence – it was Arya who called him brother, who he felt properly was his sister and Sansa who was always been pointed about the 'half'.   
  
Now he was called her brother and she spoke kindly to him and gave him counsel and asked about his injuries and sewn his clothes. As if to make up for all of it. Jon had never – he had never dreamed –   
  
It made it all the much worse that he would steal this from her.   
  
"I should have refused them," he felt an intense bitterness well up in his mouth, and he still could not look at her, so deep was his shame. "I should have _told_ them – "   
  
"And question the good sense of men who have just sworn their loyalty?" Sansa chastised in gentle murmur, "Undercut them? They chose you and to tell them they should not have would have been to spit in their faces. You cannot afford to question their choice."   
  
There was sense and reason in what she said but he’d seen her lie just as smoothly before and keep much from him with incredible calm.  Did she think him a hypocrite? Perhaps she must have thought that he came to her only like a guilty boy seeking validation, to tell him that he had not done as much wrong as he thought, as he felt. Seeking approval but not true forgiveness, it was unjust of him.   
  
All of this is everything you dreamed. You craven, you want permission from Sansa. You want her to tell you that it's alright to take this from her.   
  
Jon kept his silence in bitter shame.   
  
When she touched him and began to turn him gently by the elbow, Jon sighed and allowed it, struggling not to look down. "Jon."   
  
Jon raised his eyes and Sansa's answering smile was encouraging, an attempt to show him she begrudged him nothing. She held his gaze, plucking at the material of his sleeve and speaking to soothe him. So he might take heart in her words. "You're a leader. You have experience in battle, in convincing men to fight for you by fighting for them in turn. You will make a good King."   
  
"The last time I led men they killed me."   
  
They had never spoken of what was done to him. Sansa's mouth parted in the wake of his darkly spoken admittance, her fingers catching around the tug of loose thread. It was not something he had ever wished to talk about, or bring up, in fear of burdening her needlessly.   
  
He wished he'd never said it, a grimaced wrenched his face, begging an apology to come to him, to say something –   
  
Quick and wolfish, Sansa grinned. "Then I suppose you're prepared in a way most of us can't be."   
  
Jon stared, he looked at her like she was wild. She had the wolf in her too for all her Tully looks. Sansa voice was full of a soft bluff, what had Jon thought she might say? Did he think she would say something sweet? A startled laugh puffed out of him, weary, disbelieving.   
  
He knew little about Sansa except that she had liked lemon cakes and songs and pretty dresses, his memory was that of a dead boy.   
  
Her eyes darted away and she bent her head, fiddling with his sleeve. The gesture unexpectedly childlike. It asked a sort of forgiveness for any injury her words might have caused. He felt a painful concern for her, she had not told him much of what had happened to her, who she'd had to pretend to be, how she'd had to pretend to feel…she took security in her performances. This was her armour. She would still wear it high and close around him and then unexpectedly she would do such as this, touch his arm or say his name, and Jon would soften like wet paper and become plagued with such regret.   
  
Jon spoke, barely above a whisper, gentle as if the wind might hear and snatch them away, "Are you happy?"   
  
Sansa looked up sharply, stunned as if she was in the path of the archer's bow. She searched his face, he did not know what she saw there. It was a foolish question with their brother's corpse before and beneath them. He needed to ask it. In the dim with the soft fog of her breath and her hand wound around his sleeve, her face had the low gleam of a bone moon.

“I’m fearful of the future and we must be careful on how we proceed” She slowly tilted her head as she addressed his throat, Her look was the only timid thing about her. "But I'm home," she decided, speaking quietly but firmly. "My brother is with me. I already have what I want."

An intake of breath, loud in the silent crypts. It still cut him when she said it. Like she had given him something he never thought he would have, and it was always returning with the same, jarring force. He was not yet used to it. Too shocked, too new with it to even begin to question the sincerity when she used it. Perhaps she was trying too. Jon did not know if it would ever feel the way it should.

His mouth felt dry, the soft wind and tug of his sleeve under Sansa's fingers, loosened and tightened in his chest all at once. Pulling, tugging. He had not heard his name often these past days, at the impromptu inauguration he had heard King Crow and King Snow, but Sansa had said his name – Jon, had it always sounded so warm? – more times in the space of one conversation than he'd heard in an entire moon.

When Jon spoke it was with the faintest breath of his lips, "What is to be done now?”

“There are Lannisters and Lannister loyalists to the South and your wights to the North, promise me you’ll be careful Jon. You must be careful of Littlefinger, he will be your friend for as long as it suits him.”

“And you?” he said sourly, “will you be careful of him?”

“I know how to deal with Littlefinger.”

“I do not like that you speak to him alone, I’d rather you not speak to him at all.”

“We owe him a great deal,” she said instead. “As much as I’d rather we didn’t, for all that he has done...we need the Knights of the Vale nonetheless.”

She seemed to disappear then, lost in her own musings, piecing a puzzle he did not know of in her head. Littlefinger and she had been in the godswood together, Jon did not like that he had been spotted so late. What had they spoken of?

How could she stand to speak to him? To suffer his presence?

 _I should send him away,_ Jon thought, wishing that he could. She was right, they needed his men, but he did not have to like it.

“Is there no other news from the South?”

“Cersei is a prisoner of the faith, your uncle…” Jon bowed his head, “we only know what Littlefinger has shared.”

“Then I shall find it out from him.”

“No. That isn’t necessary.”

“You and I know full well that he is never so generous with his information that he does not keep some for himself. It is a simple thing, he wants my forgiveness and to return to my good graces - “

“He sold you,” Jon said, trying not to rise to anger. “You _told_ me he did. We have sent ravens to every Northen house, inviting them here. Once the keep is back up and running, then we will be equipped to receive news from the South.”

“But why wait, Jon?” Sansa argued, gripping both his wrists. “It isn’t any trouble so why - “

Jon sighed, taking her arms. “Listen to me. Please, Sansa, there is much to do in Winterfell - there are Northern lords to receive, trials and executions yet remain. The wildlings, the Knights of the Vale, the other Northerners - we need to keep them from leaping at each other’s throats - “

“Cersei - “

“Lannister armies are in the riverlands yes, but Cersei is a captured queen, more than like to be killed for her crimes. We will deal with the South later, right now there are pressing matters. We need the North on our side.” he searched her eyes, “I need _you_ by my side.”

The admittance shocked them both, for a moment it sapped the fire out of her, she cooled, malleable, nodding.

“They will want to go South, Jon.”

“I would be a fool to let them.”

“They will want you to rescue the Riverlands.”

“Is that what you want too?”

There was a look of pain in her eyes then. The Riverlands were her mother’s kin, she must have had some hopes there.

“Please,” Jon said quietly, gentler. “for my sake, until Lady Brienne has returned, do not see him alone. I don’t want him around you, I don’t trust him.”

Sansa nodded, he did not like the subdued way she did. He did not like the shame in her.

 _Shame_. It near made him tear out of her grasp and find Baelish so he could slit his throat. What had he said to her, what had he done to her that she would not tell Jon, that she would never confess?

There was murder in his heart then, blazing in him pure as lightning and just as suddenly. It was Sansa that stayed him, Sansa afraid of him too. “ _Jon_ \- I won’t be alone with him, Jon. You can’t hurt him. Please. You can’t kill him.”

Jon took a breath, forcing calm for her sake. He couldn’t bear the thought of her fearing him. He spoke in a harsh, pained whisper. “I don’t want you seeing him. Sansa, you don’t need him anymore. You don’t have to ask him for anything.”

Sansa looked as if she might fight him again but thought better of it.

Tersely she stood and bowed her head, “If his grace deems it fit, I’ve no choice but to obey.”

She did it to cut him Jon knew and knowing it made no difference. It still cut him. Her exquisite cordiality injuring him as precisely as she had planned, Sansa’s cool look held, and it must have shown on his face, his damnable hurt for how she faltered again. “Jon,” she cried out, “Oh, Jon. I’m sorry,” she seemed astonished by the word too, stepping quickly to him.

Her throat wrangled around a noise of thwarted anger, he flinched when she lay her hand against his cheek. And then it was his turn to comfort her, the surprised hurt flashing in her eyes, Jon took her wrist before she could withdraw. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “I was surprised. Your hands were – are – cold, Sansa.”

His sister weakly pulled at her wrist but Jon held, unreasonably guilty. Sansa’s mouth twisted, she blinked quickly and hard, as if she were struggling not to cry. If he pulled her to him, held the back of her neck and held her, would she cry into his neck? He felt her shiver and he stirred with concern, hating himself for his harshness before. “Your gloves.”

Sansa swallows, her voice hoarse, choked back on tears. “I didn’t realize.”

She had left them on the table, reddening in the pool of wine Lord Cerwyn had spilled. Jon had watched only noticed after she’d left and it maddened him. Sansa would sometimes never venture out of her rooms for fear of muddying her dress, and yet…she had scarcely spared the things a glance that night.

 _I took them for you_ , his throat tightened.Jon had picked them up and slid them into his jerkin, the wine would stain his tunic but he could not have bourne leaving them alone. They were too cold to wear now and he felt humiliation at the thought of giving her the stained things, of returning them to her. He scarcely understood what held him back from telling her. Perhaps it would show her he was too watchful, too overbearing, it said too much. He should have given them to her the moment he’d found her down here, now Jon didn’t know where to begin before he gave them to her now.

Her hand was cold, her palm freezing, it stung his cheek, and yet his sister had not once shivered. She had touched him first, but holding her there felt like he was the one taking liberties. It had never been there between them, and yet it was Sansa who was always coming towards him like she could not help herself, halting only briefly, once it was too late to think better of it, to hide it.

She hadn’t realized she’d left her gloves, she hadn’t realized that Jon would startle at her touch, she hadn’t realized a great many things. Jon felt overlywarm, “It’s fine,” he announced, his head rushing, “It’s…”

He ground his jaw, shoving aside his distraction at her closeness. They were of a height now, Sansa had grown, there was a sweet scent rising off her, a dark perfume she had rubbed into the pale inside of her wrist that made him swallow. If he let her go he was sure she would run from him and never touch him again. His body flamed, the back of his neck grew hot. He recognized his need, he could not bear being touched but he could not bear the idea that she might never touch him again. Perhaps it was the cold, perhaps it was the coming deaths that loomed in the future, it was shame and guilt, the knowledge that none of them would need the other at all if they weren’t all the other had left, but a deep, hollow place in him hungered and yearned, to keep her by him, to never be separated from her again.

Her head was bowed, her braid rich and full over one shoulder. It made him angry, what they could have forced her to become. He cursed himself and muttered sternly, “You should be in bed.”

Holding her wrist to his throat to keep her there, he fumbled. Jon shoved back the side of his cloak with his other arm as he raised his free hand to his mouth. Sansa who had avoided his gaze now watched him curiously as Jon pulled off his glove with his teeth, then the other, keeping one hand holding her all the while.

“You should be before a fire,” Jon continued muttering, he pulled away her wrist and reaching for the hand that had lain on the drum of his heart he worked warmth into both of them. “You’ll fall ill if you’re not careful.”

Sansa’s look was intrigued, and it was Jon then who avoided her gaze.

“I’ve survived Boltons, Lannisters and much more,” A throaty, amused laugh. Sansa remarked dryly, sounding far away. “I’m not going to expire from a chill.”

He realizes she was watching him, studying the abrasions of his hands. Jon felt his neck flush, his hands were wretched, scarred and ugly. Bruised and horrid. There was still mud in the grooves of his palms, scoured in the torn flesh of his fist, which still prickled and burnt over his knuckles. It hurt to move them, it stretched the skin over his hand, tearing whatever fresh scab might have been trying to heal, reopening the split flesh. It was a reminder of his savagery, the monstrous rage that would have blinded him completely had Sansa not been there. His hands were those of a killer.

He had overstepped of course. A voice told him that he was only trying to become accustomed to it, to train his affection. It was important he become accustomed to Sansa. Her hands were ice in his. It was more her study of his wounds that made him hurry to pull away from her, the strange pity in her eyes. He’d frightened her before, perhaps he still frightened her. It vexed Jon, the changes in him. The unexpected pride he’d felt to realize she had killed Ramsay, it was so unlike him, it bordered on malice, his violence, feeling himself become more and more of a monster, suddenly channelling a spring of fury he’d never known he’d had.

He stilled. What was he now?

You died.

_You came back wrong._

“Jon, what is it?”

He dropped her hands, “Nothing.”

She didn’t believe him, she bit her lip, considering. Jon shifted, smiling falsely, “Can I take you back?”

“Yes,” Sansa said after a pause, “of course.”

He offered his arm and meekly she took it, he carefully tucked it beneath his and felt her put more weight on him. Sansa leaning into him. He hadn’t done this before. In all their travels in the past fortnight, he had never escorted her in such a way but he supposed that things had changed now, somewhere between being a bastard and being a bastard king. He thought it might please her, that he was attempting to be courteous, even if the all the courtesies fit wrong on him, and made him feel foolish and ungraceful in comparison, but he wanted to please her then.

Her sleeve brushed his, he smelt her perfume. Jon led her away.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 -

 

 

 


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This new chapter update is 41 pages on my word processor. forty one. what the fuck.

 

* * *

 

 

 

This is about my body  
& my hands  
& my hands touching my body.  
& maybe that’s all a monster is:  
a body that’s survived

 

—  **To Be a Monster,** _Jasmine C. Bell_

 

 

* * *

 

  

 

For the entire night and half the day Jon Snow had been moved through the keep.

 

He had first seen her to bed and made the red woman watch over her like a septa, and left. The worst of the the slurry of war had been washed from him by the time he'd appeared in her doorway, as though to make sure of where she was, and where she was, like a child, expected to stay. There was untouched embroidery on her lap and Ramsay's screams still in her ears, as surrounding as the warmth of the hearth. Jon doesn't ask.

 

Jon takes to duties befitting the lord of a keep. It was what father would have done, Robb too perhaps.

 

Should she have insisted upon helping that night? She was weary and though she sorely considered it, she did not know what she might do beyond changing bloody linens and tending fires.

 

She would only be underfoot, and Jon had been adamant that she be kept safe, so she allowed it to keep his peace of mind.

 

Tonight was a test of roles, he had given her the kill owed to her...but they had not spoken further beyond arrangements for her safety.

 

The red woman had settled before the flames and the wildling on the other side of the door would shift heavily as if to remind that though he was unseen he was not absent and neither was Jon's will.

_Your brother's men,_ Littlefinger had said.

 

She watched the Arryn camp beyond the perimetre, their white tents eerie and hard to discern for it in the snow fall. Sansa was no fool, they were not her men either.

 

Littlefinger had brought maesters, ever ready to ingratiate himself, ever armed to secure the right kind of favours. She had seen his creatures move along the keep, small, quiet things, efficient as met the needs of their brothel master. He was a vulturous opportunist and for Jon to turn them away would have been foolish given their need, _be careful brother._

 

Petyr Baelish may have been outside these walls but she can only avoid him for so long, Sansa knew. I _will keep myself from his eye for a little longer,_  she told herself, knowing that soon it would be impossible.

 

She may have avoided being seen by them for the rest of this night, but Sansa would not be so ignorant as to assume that Littlefinger did not already know that she was now a murdress, that he would find her on the morrow, that perhaps he would even congratulate her. It would be just like him.

 

She watched the grounds below and tasted the sweet-rot of the wine. She let it fill her mouth even as she wanted to spit, for its vile sweetness had been Cersei's poison. Its vileness had been sought to numb her body for the horror she had anticipated on her wedding night with the imp, with Ramsay she'd been bold, and foolish for she'd trusted again in fathers when they promised her she had the strength to navigate away from harm, to finally keep herself from danger.

 

How ironic that the imp had not touched her, she'd expected to be fouled for being Robb Stark's sister, the traitor's daughter, the traitor's heir - he had not. She knew better than to be grateful to him for it.

 

She'd thought she could control Ramsay, that he would be mindful that she was a daughter of the North, fear offending his father, fear offending the lords who had once sworn for the Stark cause. Within these walls no one can hurt me, she'd told herself. This is my home.

 

She would know too late how hurting her in defiance of all these things would only add to her husband's delight.

 

Yes, to be kind and to keep the peace, but Sansa had been too alert for bed and turned away from the small slot in the wall that had been Jon Snow's window once.

_I am a widow now, by my own hand_. She would meet Littlefinger in the morning, sure as snow fell in winter. She could not bother herself about the details of what was happening without her, of the moves being made. The battle was not yet over but what schemes were schemed this night and what moves were made would only distress her, she would know what she could in the morning. The Northern lords would be arriving, Littlefinger would make his intentions known, _but just for tonight let what is done be done without me._

 

Sansa did not spit, she did not make herself sick, she had firmly set down the goblet and would not touch it again. _What will Jon think of me in the morning once he knows?_

 

While Jon saw to the men and the fort, Sansa settled by the red woman, sewing and pulling thread to bring strength to her hands, they talked but a little - the priestess seemed occupied, taking drink like a mere mortal with mortal woes nearly. Winterfell is not silent, but it is quieter - if not for the movements of men through the halls, the commotion of work in the courtyard, the Mormont camp what men they can within the walls and the rest of their diminished hosts are without. The wildings are even fewer in number after the battle, their sick and dying are kept within, she is sure. She expects this to be Jon's orders.

 

The Knights of the Vale are too large a host and remain outside the walls, Sansa swallows and thinks of sieges, of the Blackwater burning. She can't help it.

 

It is not too hard to obey Jon, she's seen first-hand the ease with which he commands, how suited he is to leading. In the morning her bastard half-brother appears in her doorway dutifully, weary and half-dead from it. Sansa had gifted to him the labours of her own vigil and been thanked, she had moved about him quickly and found reasons to dismiss him, she could not bear to analyse his awkwardness to find rebuke for what she had done the night before. The way he'd looked at her with their brother's corpse between them had been enough.

 

He mentioned nothing of her dead husband, of murder, of Rickon - she could not bear looking for accusations to once more challenge.

 

She cannot bear the threat of his disappointment or his fear.

 

 

* * *

 

“It should be you,” Jon had whispered, not meeting her eyes.

It was good that he was ashamed, for allowing it, for wanting it. He had complained about her needing to be abed but it was he she watched with concern and approval. The darkness beneath his eyes, the exhaustion he had hid well before the lords now dragging him down so that he looked at her with more defeat, with a strained desperation so constant it was now but a wearying companion.

_ It’s good that he does not gloat, _ though Sansa could not imagine Jon capable of gloating, his features were always stone. He’d been called sullen when they were children but never unkind.  _ You, Sansa. You were unkind. _

Exhausted.  _ Good _ . A crown was not an honour but a curse, a burden – with that power came its weight. It was good that Jon felt it. Joffrey hadn’t.

It was still behind her eyes, the hazy impression of somebody else’s dream.  Joff sprawled back in his golden silk doublet, his head rocking like it was all nothing but a hat. Sometimes the ugly blades would catch his sleeves, tearing at them. Sansa remembered wishing that his throat would catch on them too. Preferably while he listened to the pleas of commoners and just as he opened his mouth to give his ruthless judgement, and right when the entire court would be gathered. So that when Joffrey laughed or tossed his head impatiently, quick and petty and cruel, he could cut himself somewhere vital and blood could spill and splash, spray over the floor, rain on all the liars and the courtiers who bowed and scraped and let Ilyn Payne swing his sword down over her father’s neck. They could sing songs about it. He would be a fool in the song, a cruel monster malformed, a product of incest, a  _ Lannister _ brought down by his own folly. They would sing about her too. Sansa who would have walked beneath the spray and bathed in it, she would be red, red like her hair.

_ Liar. You wept when Joffrey died _ , not out of grief but out of horror. Then she was told for these tears. “You have a good heart, my lady.” She should have been joyous when Joffrey died but all she’d felt in her _ good heart  _ was terror.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

These were her father’s quarters, Catelyn’s too. She saw Jon hesitate in front of the hearth. Even his beatings he never took them here. Sansa turned to the fire, her hand flat on the arm of her chair, an odd burn behind her eyes. So he would not fumble beneath her stare and so she could hide herself from him. Jon was a strong leader, taking to every office with enviable ease but she found sometimes that she could unnerve him unexpectedly.  _ I make him nervous.  _ She thought with a faint, near fond regret.  _ Does he look at me and see mother? _ The way Aunt Lysa had, the way Petyr did, the way everyone else did. Too much that she bitterly understood that they couldn’t see her father in her at all.  _ Next to Jon I look like nothing more than a frail Southron girl. _

Finally, he sat and hunched forward with his hands clasped, watching the fire. Sansa felt herself relax a little, it was a brief ease, her relief quickly beset by the expectation that in a few moments whatever peace she’d gained with Jon here might be shattered once more, all over again. These were his quarters now, though he might not have realized it yet.

Sansa had made the preparations the moment she was able to excuse herself from the hall. After they’d made her brother a King. The Onion Knight had finished taking her to the kitchens and soon after he’d deposited her in her father’s quarters, it was as he was leaving that she had quickly asked him to call a servant for her, apologising for her forgetfulness lest he be suspicious of why she did not ask for one in the kitchens where he would have also have been present. They would need to make the necessary arrangements to see that Jon bed down in her parent’s bedroom.

She was saving herself the embarrassment and the tediousness of it. After all it was his rightful place and she would rather be done with it quickly than fear talk at the strangeness of her remaining in them becoming an issue later, Sansa also was mindful that the possibility that someone else would pre-empt her first and move her before she could decide it herself. There were enterprising and eager enough fools about the world to make such an imposition, but they would not be incorrect in their assumptions should they decide.

Her authority here was yet as of established, flimsy – she didn’t know if she was a lady of Winterfell for true yet, for…if Jon was King did it not stand to reason that he would be considered its lord? She had commanded the household that evening before the dinner with the Northmen but that had been natural, assured, Jon had given her her parent’s rooms after all and it had been the assumed thing that certain powers be allowed to her.

_ That was before they made him King _ . Power had been in her hands, slippery as a black eel – she had lost it again, it was not a sword to be assured of possession. She didn’t know yet how to reorient herself, she did not want someone to do if for her just because she had been too slow to take note of the several, rioting changes that moved through the fort. She would rather not be corrected for such as that.

_ If I am to leave these rooms let it be of my own accord. _

Sansa’s dignity was dearer to her now than ever, after so many years of having it trodden on. She had sung and begged in King’s Landing, called her brother Robb a traitor and with the Hound’s cloak wrapped around her naked, torn back told lord Tyrion that Joffrey was her one true love. When she agreed with her captors that her brothers actions were treason, assured them of their ever rightful disdain, taken their barbs and their sleights, sang for them, sang for Aunt Lysa _. I’m a stupid little girl who never learns _ .

She had pretended to be stupid for so  _ long _ . It had been refreshing to live in the Vale, to play at being a bastard girl, for Petyr to tell her his schemes and compliment her insight. She thought that he was teaching her to use her own value where it had been used against her, that she was being groomed for making moves instead of being a pawn.

_ You thought you were playing the game. _

She had liked his praise, liked the change.  No more. When she had convinced Jon and gone to raise the army with him, when she’d spoken plainly with lords who would not fight for them, Sansa had refused to be stupid, to play the fool. There was a time and place for those indignities, she could choose it now. The wildling’s back had rippled with shadow, turned from her and the war table, tilting his great red head and asking Jon,  _ Did you really think that cunt would have fought you man to man? _

Jon’s response had scraped at the insides of her ears, his low voice had been grim and wry and  _ proud _ .

_No,_ he’d said, _But_ _I wanted to make him angry_.

It was so  _ naïve _ it had made her want to  _ scream _ . She couldn’t help thinking it a foolish boast, not when she knew all that she did. Sansa had instead stared calmly ahead, resisting the impulse to snarl and use words to hurt Jon, to impress upon him his ignorance. Not in front of his men. Not then.

It had made her so furious that once more he had not consulted her or requested her input,  _ Petyr _ would have asked – he always made it seem like she could be clever too, in the Vale he had shared just enough to make it feel like he really did think her blood to impart wisdom to. Though fathers did not usually look at their daughters with such heat, nor kiss them in such away, nor so often.  _ Littlefinger _ – she corrected herself, that was his true name.

_ Littlefinger only let you think he valued what you thought so you could be even more a fool and trust him. You’re easier to ply if you want his approval. _

But it had not occurred to Jon to ask her what she thought.

But  _ she _ had known Ramsay, it was  _ Sansa _ who had suffered him,  _ survived _ him. Jon had wanted to make Ramsay  _ angry? _ He thought Ramsay was a man! That he thought and felt like a  _ man _ – it was  _ easy _ to make Ramsay angry, it was just as easy to see why one  _ should not _ . He still maintained his cruel, level-head in anger _. It doesn’t make him less sensible, it just makes him more dangerous _ . Like a cyvasse player intent on returning minor loss with the killing blow.

But Ramsay was dead. She and Jon lived, courtesy of the ambitions and affections of a whoremonger now...but Sansa had learnt a great deal enough to know she must make use of all things. She was not Robb Stark’s captive sister now, not a Lannister imp’s bride, her mother’s replacement, Littlefinger’s ward or his bastard daughter, a Bolton bastard’s broken wife or widow – she was  _ Sansa Stark _ and by rights the Lady of Winterfell.

While she was that – and she was determined to be that for as long as she could until death or political tides forced her to be otherwise – she would play any part she was required to except that of a fool.

_ Not in my father’s house. _ She refused to be shamed once more, especially not here, not again.  _ No more. _

Jon and she had walked arm in arm through to what he thought were still her rooms, in the late night time the halls were empty. Blackened stone, haunted. Hot water used to warm the walls but many parts that they passed through had had their construction damaged, the cold sometimes got so bad her breath would curl in the air. Her fingers had found the steadying weight of Jon’s arm. He was unnaturally warm…

_ Or is it that I am so cold? _

It occurred to her that he was the only man she’d held whose violence, desire and ambitions she did not fear. She considered the hard underlying muscle, the sinuous strength of a sword arm, the executioner’s swing.  _ He has struck men down with this arm, he has killed men with this body _ . He’d forgotten himself in the battle and remembered himself just barely in the yard _. He saw your face… _

_ And it had stilled him. _

She knew for certain then that this arm would never be raised against her, Jon would never brutalize her the way other men had. It was his carelessness in other areas that she feared; he would never directly harm her. His strength and his fierceness, these at least would have their uses.

The ironborn had left their mark and if Sansa did not leave hers they would sing about Winterfell the same way they’d sung about Harrenhaal. A daughter of the north raped, a fortress ravaged by fire and the dead. Her grip on Jon’s sleeve had tightened, thinking about it.  _ I won’t let that happen. _

“You're Robb's sister, you are father's trueborn daughter, it should be you - ”

He was right, after Robb such a thing would have fallen to Sansa. 

_ And they beat me in King’s landing for it, _ as if they believed she might ever have had had claim. They had married her to the imp and no one had marched for Ned Stark’s true born daughter then. Robb had kept the Kingslayer because he was worth more to him as a prisoner than Arya and Sansa ever were alive.  _ They married me to Ramsay, so even if his father should die and lose this war, this marriage would have bound me to them forever _ .

No one came for her when he raped her and beat her,  _ no one marched for me then _ . Ramsay would have been Warden of the North twice over, through inheritance and through marriage.

_ They didn’t march for me, not even in the end, _ she thought,  _ they marched for Jon. _

What would Robb have done differently now, had he been alive? That Sansa was not already doing by giving Jon these rights?

If Robb had had a say, Jon would have still been King then too. _ He loved you, Jon. I know he would have made you a Stark, with Bran and Rickon dead. I was a hostage besides, married to the imp. _ Making Jon inherit it would have been Robb’s will _. _

_ It would have made the political sense to support an act of his own love for you. He would have made you his heir and given you rights to Winterfell should he fall. _

It was a practical move, one she would have made. It was not this that stung her, that Robb loved Jon - it was that her brother had not come for her. He couldn’t have, she knew. It hurt all the same.

A hurt subdued but present for it made no sense to rail against those long dead. It did not torment her, for pain and agony were a howling wind, muffled out by the stone brick of her own heart, the fortress she’d built of her mind. If she allowed it to, it would whip her away and leave her lost in it, it would kill her. Sansa could not yet afford to feel the entirety of it.

_You are Alayne, and you must be Alayne all the time._ _Even here. In your heart. Can you do that? Can you be my daughter in your heart?_

She could be Jon’s sister in her heart.  _ I love him, I think – or if I don’t, I need him _ .  _ I care for him. I do not want him hurt. _ Would that be enough? It needed more than just tenderness between them, more than just duty. She had to make it deeper, more true. It felt untrue after their history but in all her time away she had longed for him in the painful, arresting way she’d longed for home. Not knowing him at all.

She could never hope that he might love her like he loved Arya, or Robb, or any of the rest. She had loved Robb but that love itself cut her for all that it had protected her, it was still one of the few parts of her that rationality and logic could not properly assuage. She had loved Robb but she did not know whether she could forgive him, even dead. It was selfish and ugly of her.

She did not want the crown. Had they made her queen Petyr would have tried to marry her or married her off to someone again. A heifer or a whore. He would have killed Jon quicker maybe, set him away so there would be no doubt or opportunity to divide the North’s loyalty between them. Or use him until he outlived his uselessness an Petyr’s convenience.

It was important that Petyr would see Jon’s value,  _ you have to make sure he sees it, you have to make Petyr want him alive. _

She’d unbalanced him, “I’m not – I’m not a – “

What would her mother say if she’d heard her, if she could  _ see _ her. “You’re a  _ Stark.” _

He had walked her to her lord-father’s chambers, Sansa holding on to his arm and trying too. When Lord Cerwyn had come to her table, she’d felt exasperated by her own tolerance. She was raised well though and as such had been courteous. In King’s Landing she’d been courteous and kind, she always thought she had been so before it, but she’d  _ had  _ to use it to protect herself so very often, to preserve herself.  _ Courtesy is a lady’s armour. _

Men had been calling her  _ Princess _ in greeting and the answering wave of her hatred was so full and black it shook through her, a mudslide of anger. To be princess of anything, to be once more the sister of a King, a hostage, a prize... She did not know her own kindness anymore. It was as instinctual as fear these days, singing and spouting generous foolishness, accommodating monsters.  _ I used to be kind. _ Even when she summoned up kindness for lord Cerwyn, for Jon, for anyone – she didn’t know whether she was being Sansa or the little bird trapped in King’s landing, or Petyr’s coy bastard daughter, using sweetness as armour or weapon.

She didn’t know anything of her heart then at all.

The man had been apologising in his way, telling her he’d seen her once as young girl when his father had visited Winterfell. He couldn’t expect her to remember, he’d said. His father. His eyes had taken on a wet shine. It was as if he had been transported in that very moment to a period of terrible horror and terrible grief, standing aside as Ramsay made him watch. He was standing in his dead father’s place now, Sansa realised.

Ramsay had arrived at the Cerwyn holdings and generously invited the young lord forward, that he had pulled back lord Cerwyn’s father’s seat for him with his ugly, discordant graciousness – the young Cerwyn had been made to sit like a guest in his own father’s chair, made an audience in his own halls and he’d had to watch from there as his father was flayed alive.

“I was there when they cut off my father’s head,” Sansa said. His eyes had gone round, his wine slipped from his fingers.  The goblet clattered against his broiled leather breastplate, so easily unmanned whereas Sansa felt a frozen serenity speaking of the ugliness that had shaped her forever. “I was a little girl. I screamed.”

She felt Jon’s eyes on her. She felt sorry for this lord, even overcome with his grief he still thought she was  _ beautiful _ , even as he was ashamed of his cowardice he had taken his fill of her shyly with his eyes as he’d spoken before. What difference was there between them?

He’d been forced into being Ramsay’s bannerman as she’d been forced to be his wife. She didn’t remember seeing him before she escaped and could not know for certain whether he would have laughed with Ramsay too, when he beat and raped her, or been silent. If he’d have let being a craven make him act on another’s cruelty, would he have been the sort of man eager to hold her down to please Ramsay? Like the Kingsguard who beat her at Joffrey’s command?

Slynt had enjoyed it but the Hound had bourne it all, his singular act of defiance in view of court had been tersely covering her with his cloak. Would it that she had gone with him… _ he would have raped you bloody.  _ A voice told her _ , he could have. _

She had survived and been at their mercy, Cley Cerwyn had survived Ramsay and been at his mercy.

_ But it is different for a man _ . Women were in the habit of being captives, men – there were unused to bending, to performing the contortions, to be commanded and destroyed. He wouldn’t have survived the Red Keep. He wouldn’t have let himself survive like Theon, who Ramsay had taken a knife to, to make him even less than a man. She hoped he was safe, she prayed her was in his sister’s care now, safe. Safe.

Lord Cerwyn could have suffered the torture of seeing his kin killed but never the indignity of being raped, beaten, made naked and required to sing just about how his kin were traitors. They would never have married him off to an imp or a bastard. Perhaps they’d have given him a spare pretty Frey like her uncle Edmure who was now a hostage in a Riverrun retaken by Lannisters.

No, she looked at Lord Cerwyn and knew that the Lannisters would have put him in a cell or killed him. An heir, a  _ son _ .

She heard that Harrion Karstark glumly walked the battlements of Harrenhal, his wardens walking behind him. Letting the lordling stretch his legs.

She thought, how easy, how insurmountable a man’s shame.

Sansa had been a spectacle, her humiliation extensive and ever-present. They could threaten her maidenhead, her face, her body, shame her in every which way. She’d thought no one could have been worse than Joffrey at being a monster.  _ Ramsay raped me and hurt me, he violated me in ways women are best violated _ . What was Cley Cerwyn afraid of? Death? Shame because he’d been called a coward? Sansa had never been given the luxury of choosing death.

_ If you’d have died they would have called you brave. I would just be pitiful, a body broken in the snow. The lord who found honour in defiance and the beautiful, forlorn lady who threw herself off a tower. _

_ They’ll remember all the hands on me before they remember my name. _

Shame. Sansa had known it profoundly. Ever since they took her father’s head, she’d known it all.

_ If I’d escaped Joffrey, gone to Robb _ … _ and  _ he’d _ demanded we go back to King’s landing _ ,  _ would I have refused just as heartily as Lord Cley? Would I have sneered and told the Northern lords we should go home? _

_No_. She realized, I’d want to go home. _I’d want to go home. In a hurry too, and_ _I would have hated them_. To make up for not hating Robb who had been too solicitous and too saavy as to buy his own sister back but seen nothing wrong with losing a war over the honour of a foreign _whore_.

Sansa would have wanted them all to burn for what they’d done. She’d have wanted her mother’s arms, but there’d have been vengeance in her heart too.

When Sansa rose she spoke gently. “These have been hard years, Lord Cerwyn. For a long time I was ashamed of surviving,” it was her,  _ you’re the craven _ . She’d killed her own father because of her foolishness, Cersei said she was  _ wet with love _ . “My uncle Brandon watched his father die when Aerys set him on fire, the mad king had strung my uncle up. So he hung, strangled to death like a thief.”

Lord Cley swallowed. Unmanned by her speaking of death, like Jon later would be when she said  _ ‘Your Grace’. _

“If you had died your house would have died with you, what name would your father have sacrificed himself to defend then?” She spoke as she filled his goblet, an attentive host.  _ Let your grace remind him of your femininity, that the inside of your wrist is lovely. Let your words remind him most of your steel. _ “Ramsay was a monster.” Sansa said quietly.  So he might remember that despite her dignity and her grim speech, he still hurt her in ways men don’t want their women hurt by other men. She set down the wine, final. “What matters is that you’re here now, my lord. To honour your house’s vows. It is what your father would have done, what he died defending.”

“Lady Sansa…”

“Please,” she said, “It settles my heart to know that we can rely on you, that you will fight for my brother. You must protect him now, Lord Cley. I can see in you a man who has been forced to make hard choices and though you might not believe it as of now, I  _ know _ that you have honour.”

Sansa raised her eyes with the task ended and watched him with an outward calm, her nerves were alight with a familiar fear, that she had once again overreached, that lord Cley would perhaps see these words as a foolishly transparent ploy.

He listened in silence, she saw him bite at the inside of his cheek, how his surprise had made him raise his eyes to her own. But this surprise did not twist into affront or vanish into the cool, patient glare of a man who did not intend on being made a fool of.  She saw that when he had decided to speak to her the best he expected was her civility, not her confidence, her trust and this request.

Sansa did not think of or know at all very much of Cley Cerwyn but she knew that he bore arms and he was a lord who had men who followed him, that he needed to prove himself and that her brother needed allies. Every ally she could gather. She knew he was a good fighter but that events had made him wary and fearful. They had sworn themselves to her brother readily this night but when times turned sour she needed a man like lord Cley who would remember the King’s pretty sister and the sweet, unintended charity she gave a man who had survived his father’s flaying, remember when she decided to put her confidence in him. Remember that such a woman would  _ never _ consider her brother her enemy. Northern men were not very different from other men sometimes, they loved their Northern women or at the very least respected them. She needed him to believe her, to use whatever tenderness she could stir up from him to serve her brother. She saw him hesitate.

Sansa bowed her head slightly, her voice still pitched low enough for lord Cerwyn to be certain he had been singled out specifically. Her brother didn’t need a shamed bannerman, for guilt either made a well-beaten dog or a resentful one. The former was useless, the latter was dangerous and disloyal. Many of the lords who felt shame for their inaction needed to feel that they were trusted and held to a greater standard, that their sovereign believed them capable of more than their shameful acquiesce to Bolton rule and the indignities that they had suffered during. If that meant she must appeal to a key few men’s egos and sooth their old hurts, it would need doing. “My brother Robb did not honour his bannermen as he should have and for that I am deeply grieved. I know you have suffered because this house failed you. I only ask that you keep by us, my lord and trust us not to fail you again.”

_ He’ll sneer at me now _ , instinctively she expected such things, for men’s faces to twist if she presumed to think she had any right to influence, to speak like an authority and not just merely a King’s pretty sister whose uses were limited and few.  _ We, us – this house _ . Apologising for Robb, taking responsibility as a liege lord might for his men. It was not her place, they hadn’t given it to her.

Lord Cerwyn listened. He could be hers, in body, in mind perhaps. He would feel she had appealed to his honour and reminded him of old vows. Forgiven him without trivialising his failure. He looked at her with wide eyes.

Lord Cley stood straighter, met her eye again and with jaw grim, he nodded. “The North remembers.”

Sansa had inclined her head and after quickly debating whether or not she should allow him to see relief in a smile, decided to only return the words quietly. He had turned red and left, she did not properly expect him to bow as he did and there was more respect in it than she would have received before, when she was only a King’s sister and not made him certain she was a Lady of Winterfell. She was glad he had not touched her, she was glad she hadn’t had to touch anyone.

Except Jon. She had touched him a great deal and only part of it was forced, the other half was less deliberate, was strikingly urgent. She had found his hand again when he’d taken his seat in the hall once more, suddenly a King – his expression had become unreadable but she had seen the agitated open and close of his fists, his stiff shoulders. There had been a painful lurch in Sansa’s chest, she’d halted herself just barely from openly reaching for him. _Oh,_ _Jon_.

She had wanted to grab Lyanna Mormont by the shoulders and  _ shake _ her but Sansa had needed to communicate quickly her convincing approval before he could think she despised him or that she was in any shape or form disappointed in the events as they had unfolded. It was not time to squabble over another stupid title, she needed to support him no matter her petty reservations or pride. The worst (so far) had been done, it was important to move forward and  _ quickly _ .

Jon  _ needed _ to trust her, not feel that he had wronged her. She knew full well how quickly guilt could breed contempt. If his guilt did not mobilize or encourage him to pursue their goals then it was  _ useless _ to her. She was proud of him. She’d felt terror, envy and fierce pride. Only two of those things were useful to her.

Arya would have pounded his back and called him an idiot, unashamed of her affections. Sansa was a lady – a poor sister. They were different girls. She had rested her hand on his hand, not only to remind him that she was his supporter but to remind herself that he was real,  _ hers _ . Her flesh and blood. Real in her hands, in his presence. He kept his distance, hesitant and wary – he had every right to be, it had always been like this in the past. He was a bastard and she her mother’s daughter, to engage her would still feel to him an unfamiliar overstep.

It was for her to decide what was allowed, put so far above him as she’d been. It would be Sansa’s responsibility to bring him close.

He had kept so very still under the table, his discomfort with her touch as much as she understood it, had still hurt. Then he had quickly retaken command of himself quickly and Sansa had let go.

Jon had startled when she’d cupped his cheek, she’d felt she’d startled herself too. It was unexpected, her fierce hurt, fiercer because she understood so deeply how his scepticism so deserved, it had made her eyes sting all the more. Sansa had not wept in so very long – weeping had felt like all she’d done, true tears and resorting to tears to placate Lannisters, Aunt Lysa, to please Ramsay…when she stepped off of the walls of Winterfell, ice in her marrow, tears would only have frozen on her cheeks. She ran so hard, it was too cold, tears helped no one when she was running with Theon, her hand a claw in the stubbed club of his, running, running, to Jon, to take refuge at the Wall.

Jon had flinched from her touch and suddenly she’d felt her eyesight blur, her breath short and muddy and Jon – how his face had fallen – it was worse than in the tent, how astonishingly young hurt made him. ‘If his Grace deems it fit,’ she had said and he’d stilled, it had pierced her heart how he’d stood so still. It had been true, she realized now that she’d gained a new handler – she was beholden to Jon as unwed women were beholden to their fathers and their brothers,  _ you belong to him now.  _ Her heart hadn’t known what to do at the thought.

He could give her to anyone, as father might have given her to a Northerner, as Robb might have given her to secure one of his loyal bannermen, _ but he won’t. _

_ Jon  _ **_wouldn’t._ **

She had never felt more cruel than she had calling him King in that moment. She was reminded vividly of all the times he had stood aside of her in their youth, quieting as he would at the sight of her lady-mother, careful and sombre, ducking his head and attempting to bring as little attention to himself as possible, hunched as if bearing for a blow while Robb never did anything but stand proud and confident, never afraid of his own laughter or his place.

Sansa had with words managed to pry beneath his armour, to cut him. How he’d stood, the soft wound of his eyes, so very grey, darker than father’s in the crypts, it had reminded her of how Jon might belong to her too, with his heart not invulnerable to her words or her feelings like it had to be to men he fought with or commanded and sent to die. She was his sister, she could injure him, he  _ let _ her.

_ There is power in that, sweetling. _

She had never enjoyed being cruel but he had made her so- so angry! Neat, curt cruelty could be found in words where Sansa had had no other means. She had understood his desire to keep her away from Littlefinger but had still bristled at it – if he could not trust her to Petyr then he was limiting her movements and the manoeuvres she might be required to make.

Jon’s intentness about caution was warranted. Her composure regarding Lord Protector of the Vale in the crypts was not as true as she wished, a part of it had been mummery. She was  _ terrified _ of Littlefinger but she was not powerless as she might have convinced Jon she was. She was gathering the sparse beginnings, the bones of a plan that would require deceiving her brother and Petyr both.

She needed to give Jon someone to trust and protect, without letting his feelings of responsibility hobble him. She had heard of what his sworn brother’s had done to him, she knew how uneasy the idea of the incident repeating itself made him, it made her uneasy too.

If she thought even a moment more on how he’d come back, of armies of the dead and red women and dragons – Sansa would lose hold on her slipping control over what she could still sensibly believe possible of the world. She had not asked him to speak on it, less afraid of the truth of it than afraid that requesting his honesty on all that had happened to him would deserve  _ her _ own honesty on all that had happened to her in exchange.

He needed to trust her, it would serve them nothing if Jon feared betrayal from her.

If Jon did not trust her she could not help him, but if Petyr believed Sansa trusted Jon overly much then he would reveal even less of himself to her. He needed weakness and uncertainty to exploit. She could not play overly much the fool, he already knew she no long trusted him after her frank refusal in Mole town.

In the godswood she had refused him again with her fingers spaced over the chambers of his heart, the space between them small, barely controlled, she was slow to take her hand away from him and they had seemed to sway, the two of them, around that dangerous point of touch, him pressing his suite, her halting it. A dance finally where she might begin to match his step, might oppose him too. It was frightening, it was unexplainably electrifying. The frost lined branches of the weirwood, the cold knifing between what little separated them.  _ Lovers stand like this. _

Sansa wanted him to pay for all that he had done to her but the old memory was still there, of being a girl he’s saved, a girl he’d guided and educated – a man who wanted her. She hated him for giving her away, he’d betrayed her trust, he’d given her away like a whore who needed breaking in. “Then I will die,” he’d said and stood as if he were a man with nothing his hands. The slippery liar. Littlefinger would never have had any intention of dying, certainly not for her.

He’d tried to wind his poison around her ears _. Half-brother _ , he’d said,  _ who do you think they should rally behind? _

It was a shallow footing, clever and so very like him. She’d have to make him believe he had firmer hold on her than he did, to risk him gaining firmer hold on her than he already had. He was a persuasive man, he knew what to say to people, knew how to turn minds and turn Kings…it would be no easy task.

But she knew that whatever nefarious schemes he had, whatever balance of lust and tenderness there existed in his feelings towards her that he wanted her forgiveness too, that he wanted her to  _ want _ him, to accept him in a way her mother never would have. Sansa turned away from the thought quickly, for it unsettled her.

She had been angry with Jon. She felt there was so little time left to scramble for control, to reassert herself, to find out what to do, she needed so much to regain some medium of calm in a world that whirled with madness.

She had made her excuses at the feast for more than just attending to the servants, the squabbling lot, the Northerners that remained of the household were wary of the Southerners that had come to supplement their numbers, she would take their sour suspicion as a good sign. Sansa had left her rooms after speaking to the servant Ser Davos had called for her, and wandered the path, slow to the crypts, alone and unprotected save for the stout, grey haired spear wife who she’d caught sight of. Following from afar.

Sansa had gone to the crypts to mourn her baby brother, remembering the last time she’d stood in the shadows of dead kin. _ I suspect I’ll be a married woman once you return _ , what foolish coyness, she’d wanted to use it against Littlefinger – he’d kissed her, knowing what Ramsay was and left her there. She must have been such a fool to him, aping the charms of her betters, thinking she was clever and capable.  _ Where you laughing at me when you kissed me? Or did it fill your mouth with poison, to know that you would still leave me to the monsters, that you would not share or warn? _ She hoped it killed him.

Little baby Rickon, when Jory and Jon Snow came to them with the pups wriggling in both of their arms her youngest brother had shouted ‘Shaggydog!’ and wrestled, always so rough and unruly. Shaggydog had been the wildest of the direwolves, taking after his master, quick to bite and growl and nip and guard. Ferocious, dark bristling black.  _ They took away our wolves, _ Sansa had thought, taking in air was difficult, her heart felt swollen in her throat as she’d watched the flickering darkness. They killed Grey Wind and Robb died too, Nymeria ran away and Arya lost, Rickon and Shaggydog.  _ I should be dead too _ . I lied – but I  _ had _ to lie.

Father killed Lady and they took his head too _. Maybe I’m dead and I just don’t know it yet. _

Jon, so very careful, he had put the pup before her and looked up at Sansa like he wasn’t sure he was allowed. The little direwolf had been so very gentle, so well-behaved, Sansa had wrinkled her nose at the pups but had felt her heart melt when this one approached to put her head so sweetly on her lap.  _ Lady _ , she’d decided and Jon had smiled it had transformed his grave face into something painfully boyish, relief so huge she’d had to wonder if he really was so afraid of her.  _ I should be kinder to him _ , she’d thought, but then the King and Queen had come to Winterfell and there was the dashing Prince Joffrey and it had been so embarrassing that Ned Stark could parade his bastard under his lady-wife’s very nose. Sansa had wanted the Queen to like her and Joffrey to love her too, and she’d forgotten all about what she should or could have done for Jon.  _ I was awful. _

She’d been awful in the crypts too.  _ What would Jon think if he knew you’d come down there to give Littlefinger an opening? _

She had been waiting for Littlefinger for did he not always seek her out, to insinuate himself, to have the last word, to prod her, a conspirator?

He always tried to find her alone, in her moments of greatest disorder. He told her the truth about the Hound’s face, found her after Joffrey discarded her in favour of Margaery and told her they were all liars and each and every one better than her. He took her to the Eyrie and kissed her in the slurry of the destroyed snow castle, he found her in Mole town and the godswood – always the snake coiled around her arm, the mockingbird perched on her shoulder, echoing back her own poison, offering insight and promises, persuasive,  _ dangerous. _

The spearwife had disappeared, the crypts were not their place. Perhaps the wildling’s experiences with the dead had left them shaken by the idea of surrounding themselves with so many. Sansa had been relieved, sure that he would find her, knowing how to escape their eyes.

It was the most opportune moment for him to find her, when he expected her to be at her weakest, when she was most unsettled, most easy to persuade – Sansa had been preparing herself, perhaps she would pretend to be surprised, or even snap at him, pretend that she hadn’t planned it this way, on him finding her, that she had not gone hunting with the intention of his hunting her out. And that if he thought her a liar, he’d be flattered that she’d want hide that she had wanted to see him.

But he did not come.

_ He’s angry with you _ . Or, Sansa’s silence in the crypts had dragged on, humiliating and obvious, he wants you to seek him out.

_ He wants you to come to him. _

Littlefinger would not come, no matter how long she waited. Jon did. When she’d looked up and seen him it had stoppered her breath and tears had been hot in her eyes. His beard was coming in thick, it would need cutting soon _. No, _ she’d thought,  _ let him be like this. He looks like a Northerner, like father.  _ Broader in the shoulder, even darker of hair. His sad grey eyes. The mantle she’d pricked her fingers perfecting sat him so well. So well.

His spectral white direwolf running in the snow and a crown of iron swords was all that remained to complete the image that had her heart caught.   _ He will look like a true King of Winter then. _

She’d wanted him by her immediately, he who she knew least from all her siblings. He who she had wronged.

She had been angry with him and angry with herself, she’d shot into a plea about what moves he might make and he had decided to ban her from meeting Littlefinger.  _ I need him mistrustful of Littlefinger but if he finds me speaking to him it will be  _ **_I_ ** _ who’ll lose Jon’s trust. _

It was a relief at least that Jon didn’t fight her on keeping Littlefinger around, and Sansa admitted to herself, feeling a little embarrassed, it had surprised her.

Jon may not have been underhandedly sly but he wasn’t stupid. They would survive without Littlefinger helping, but Littlefinger not helping meant it was likely he would work against them. Sansa knew she and Jon could manage somehow on their own but she needed to keep Littlefigner close, keep an eye on him – or as much as one could keep an eye on such a man as he – if she let Jon think she thought Petyr was indispensable then Jon would grow angry.

Jon’s actions then fueled by this resentment would be key in letting Petyr think  _ she _ thought he was indispensable. If Petyr felt secure in his position he would be less interested in actively harming her interests, she would be able to hide more from him and he would be more willing to help her.  _ We need the Vale army. We cannot keep them without him. _

She didn’t presume the foolishness of asking Jon to  _ pretend _ he trust littlefinger, Jon’s face was hard to read most of the time but actual deceit would not be played convincingly. Even Sansa, a student at Petyr’s knee, had difficulty hiding her true feelings from him. Jon’s mummery would be too suspicious and foolish considering Petyr would already know her brother held him responsible for selling her to the Boltons.

 

Should the Northerners try to think ill of her, should Littlefinger ever insinuate that she wanted to be Jon’s rival – men like Cley Cerwyn would remember the sister of the King and her concern for her brother’s life, the duty she had charged their honour with in private, and the regard she had bestowed upon them with it. They would hesitate to believe lies, at least for a while.

Jon had pulled off his gloves with his teeth, the sight of his hands tugging horribly at her. Sansa hated violence, she’d loved songs and tourneys – the play fighting, the ceremonies. Ser Loras had tossed her a red rose, Joffrey’s hair had been a lush crown of straw and Littlefinger had sat next to her, his hands folded over one knee, a docile little lord, meek in public, ruthless and opportune in private. Lances raised, horses fell, men died. He could speak so softly and no one would think a little no-name lord from the fingers could be audacious enough to kill a king.

Then there had been Joffrey’s nameday tourney, the constant feeling of fear, waiting for the next crisis, the next horrible thing. There had been the battle of Blackwater bay, there had been the Hound and his smoke-stained cloak, the ruin of the imp’s face, her lord husband in the dark. Knives, swords – she used to think it beautiful to have a man swear their sword to you, to fight for you. And now? She could go her entire life and not attend another foolish tourney if she had her choice. Blood and violence turned her stomach and filled her with angry disgust, these powerful men had used their violence against her.  _ Any man who swears to defend will just as easily hurt you. _

But lady Brienne was not a man. Jon isn’t any man.  _ Jon is Jon. _ With his body soured in mud, in blood, his hair flying away from the tight knot he kept it in. When she came upon him, killing Ramsay, it had coiled something in her sharp, a set spring. She was afraid that he’d kill him. She was afraid of whether or not she could forgive him if he did.

He had been ferocious and frightening, but she was not frightened of him. He’d tugged off his gloves between the flash of his teeth and she’d seen his hands, gentle and kind with her. Ripped and ruined from killing a man who had hurt her. The tenderness she’d thought lost to her had found itself within her, had caught like the slice and tug of a hook, had caught fire, she couldn’t be angry with him. Not Jon who could be so ashamed of his violence, who was so careful with her.

He had been so warm. She wanted to take his hands and turn them over in hers, they were large and warm.  _ These are hands I might have once thought rough and crude, but they are honest hands, kind hands. _

The last man who touched her, whose touch she did not fear had been father’s.

The ruin of Jon’s knuckles, his bruised face, the silvery scars on his cheek and the ghostly sheen around his eye like the curl of claw or hook. His stare like touch itself.  _ We are no longer children, both of us. _

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

There was a low table between their chairs, Sansa reached and poured out the wine, he thanked her with a pained twist to his mouth. She watched him drink, not completely understanding her own fascination. She wanted to read him but there were complications therein, from the both of them that clouded what she could see and what she could control. He was so tired, he did not smile very often.

Arya would know how to make him smile.

“They don’t believe me.”

He spoke gloomily to the fire and Sansa turned her head to watch the flames, “They’re old men, they’ve suffered these past years. You wouldn’t want to believe it either, would you?”

“They swore to me after I told them about the threat that faces us,” Jon frowned, “they made me King. I don’t know what’s happening at the Wall right now but we need more men there. Supplies, coin.”

The flames danced on the hearth. She had heard that the red woman could see things in the fire, portents and the events of faraway places. Lady Melisendre had unnerved her, composed and yet…there was something unbearably solitary about her, in her faith and in her gait…

Though she did not know why she had Sansa knew that it was better for them all that Jon had sent her away. The Northerners kept the old gods, the red woman and her preaching of her lord of light would not have sat well with the Northern lords or their people. In a way, Jon had spared them a complication.

_ What would one more have cost? _ She wondered. The red woman had been the one to raise him from the dead.  _ Should he fall again she will not be here to call him back to me… _

The flames gave her no shapes, only gnawed on the kindling. Sansa kept her eyes on them, thoughtfully. “If they wanted to help you fight the white walkers they would not have needed to make you King.”

She turned her eyes on him when he made no response. Jon was slouched forward, his hands pressed together as he chewed sullenly on her words. So deep in thought was he, he did not noticed how her gaze softened. On his torn hands, on the shadow of exhaustion weighing on his grim face.

“But you are a Ned Stark’s son. They still hold to the old ways, Northern ways.  “

“You know as well as I that they could have called me a deserter, that they could have struck my head from my shoulders to make an example of me, and only have to say it was because I was breaking my vows.”

“You completed your vows, you died.” Sansa said, “but they didn’t need to believe that. They needed someone to challenge the Boltons for them, they needed someone with strength and a cause.”

“If they don’t believe in white walkers they like as not are not going to believe I died and rose from the dead. If they don’t believe any of it, why would they make me a King? They could have killed me.”

“You are a good fighter, you know how to make men fight for you. They made you King because they want you to protect them from the South. They want vengeance for the lives lost at the hands of Lannisters and Southerners.”  _ You heard them, Jon Snow avenged the Red Wedding! _ But Sansa, a crisp dancer, smoothly stepped on that thought and held her tongue. She’d thought after all the practice she’d had it might be the easiest thing in the world, and yet…after Ramsay, Sansa could say very cruel things. She was no savage though, like to turn wild after so many beatings – she could not afford to be. “The Riverlands have risen up against the crown again and again where  _ they _ could not. They want this very badly, it is a veritable  _ need _ .”

“They want me to fight the South but they won’t give me men for the Wall if they don’t believe me.”

“You’re their King, you could command it.”

He laughed, as if this directness surprised him. Sansa tried not to take offence, she was plenty direct when she wasn’t being the duplicitous diplomat and schemer apprenticed by Littlefinger he no doubt suspected she was. “Aye,” Jon’s look softened and she cursed herself, she must have been more transparent in her feelings than she’d expected.  _ Mistakes, Sansa, we do not make them. _ “but what force would they devote to appeasing me? I need armies there. They won’t give me good men for the Wall until I convince them of the true danger. And what of the wildlings? They’re already hostile towards Tormund’s lot, if they don’t believe now then it’s going to become an issue later. If they don’t believe in the threat they were running from they won’t let them settle on Northern land.”

Sansa knew that this had been the price for the wildlings aid, land to settle on. They called the Northerners Southerners and while loyal to Jon were much too direct and frank with a man meant to be respected as King. Jon was their King, though they would never kneel or name him so – in a sense Jon was already their King long before Northern lords forced him to it.

She thought of the Umbers who had gone to Ramsay with her little brother, they held the last Hearth and hating wildlings was in their breath, in their blood, in their bones. They were already traitors before they’d given Rickon over, eager with political ambitions to join whatever side would best suit them but they had fought against Jon and said it was because he was letting wildlings over the Wall. Was that not why the Wall existed in the first place? Why the last Hearth, their entire family histories were built upon? Winterfell was where Winter  _ fell _ . And scores of other Northern nobles whose legacies had been the barring and killing of wildlings.

The idea that such men might let wildlings now settle on their lands was ludicrous.

But not impossible, Sansa’s fingers twitched on her armrest, resisting the impulse to wearily rub at her brow.  _ Nothing ever is, sweetling – everything – every damn thing in the world…is only a matter of opportunity and control. If you are patient and clever, you will be an astute learner of the world and its decider. _

Sansa murmured agreement, her mouth tingling from the memory of a kiss she never asked for or consented to. She had been mute because she had understood that this was something to bear, something that meant nothing when being by his side meant being safe and worthy of being  _ better _ than  _ just _ safe. Worthy of becoming someone who could protect herself and thrive.  _ Did you thrive when you married Ramsay? _

_ You thought you could mould him, you overreached yourself. _  It was a strange poetry, that she had suffered in court and subsequently armoured herself in their weapons, learnt exactly how and everything to that end in the Vale and yet – all these things had been mostly useless when she was given to Ramsay. His insidiousness was cruel and predictable in its unpredictability, she could be a cruel clever wordsmith all she wanted and he still knew more than fifty ways to skin a man. More than a thousand ways to hurt her.

It was difficult to imagine playing politician with such a man – she knew how to make him angry, she was learning him as she’d learned Joffrey when he made her kiss his sword and she’d elegantly goaded him into going where the fighting was thickest. She had been learning Ramsay but never fast enough as to have been certain she would survive him. Joffrey’s sword had been called Widow’s wail. It was clean and felt chilly on her mouth,  _ You have killed no one with your own hands or your own might, no one you were on equal grounding with. _

He had passed the sentence but had not swung the sword. Odd, that he with the least experience in killing men with his hands had managed to kill everything she’d loved with his mouth _.  _ Unworthy, Sansa had thought,  _ dangerous. _ A useless, untried sword. She might as well have been kissing a spoon.

But she could kill men without touching a sword too. If she had to she swore she’d kill the right ones, though thinking of it was painful and amusing in the way self-depreciation normally comes to those aquainted with failure and helplessness.  _ I killed Ramsay. Could I truly kill other men? _

Arya would have. Arya would have  _ never _ let Ramsay do to her what he had done to Sansa. She would have shoved a candlestick through his throat. Sansa nearly smiled, to realize her feelings she felt now she must have been caught up in a little madness, that these were the thoughts that could ever amuse anyone.

Could Sansa kill a man again?

She remembered Ramsay’s snoring next to her, tears scything her cheeks while she felt her torn insides. It was insult. She’d thought about killing him a thousand times, Arya would have. But Sansa had also feared failure and consequence. Yes, he demeans this body –  _ but if they name me his killer what am I to do? _ There had been waiting to decide the moves one might make, to see how the war between Stannis and Lord Bolton would turn out. To fear what Lord Bolton might do to her. The repercussions…

_ You’re a coward. _

All such excuses.  _ Could you kill a man, Sansa? _

_ When you lied to the Vale lords you might as well have been the one who’d killed Aunt Lysa. _

She spoke before her musings could distract her. The past was gone. Vengeance did not so much burn in her chest as sit over it cold and constant, as a part of her as a silver brooch pinned over her heart. Vengeance and guilt. It was the least foolish way to carry it. “You can gauge what they want on the morrow when you first address them formally as their King. Many of the lords will want to return home as soon as possible to prepare for the winter – they’ll need instruction from you and a willingness to come back.”

Jon had been watching her, his face drawn and his dark eyes troubled. “How long will our stores last?”

It was she who troubled him more than their stores had done but he had the tact to pretend, or to prioritize.  _ One day you might think of hating him for his carefulness and his kindness, or he will hate you for your distance. _

“…Not very long. You were right, Ramsay had been preparing for a siege, that’s some relief.”

“What do you suspect the Vale Knights will do?”

He didn’t need to say it for her to hear it.  _ What do you expect Littlefinger will do? _

Yohn Royce’s sword had gleamed in the gloom, he had put it up like he’d been born to do it.  _ Fight for a man worth fighting for. _

“You aren’t  _ their  _ King, they cheered you but they did not swear their swords to you as their King. That would have required setting Robert Arryn aside, something they could never do as much as they dislike him. You are King in the North but the Vale of Arryn has always had its own king, an  _ Arryn _ King.” Sansa murmured. “Aiding us in retaking Winterfell was as much an act against the Boltons as it was an act against the crown. It was natural for them to do the next thing and accept your ascension. They’re men shamed by their inaction during a time of the North’s greatest need, they  _ want _ to fight. They will fight for you but  _ only  _ if their lord wills it. Expect them to promote his interests, which are normally very much Petyr’s”

“He’s your cousin through your mother.”

“Yes, Jon,” she smiled wearily, “He’s very fond of me. Very fond of littlefinger too.”

“Littlefinger is fond of you.” Jon sounded cold, like steel, like a sword singing for blood. Measured, deadly.

Sansa did not care to give him a fight if he wanted one. “Yes.”

“You said that the Vale men are Lord Baelish’s just as much as they’re Robert’s.”

“More, I’d say,” Sansa said, “He’s Petyr’s, body and soul.”

The acceptance of Jon as the King in the North was only the logical next step for the Vale in their alliance with the Starks and Northerners.

“When he declared for the North, is it not by default that the Knights of the Vale would come under Stark command?”

Sansa smiled ruefully at him, she saw the corner of his mouth kick, returning the expression without true heart. They both already understood. “It’s not going to be that easy, Jon. If there is a King in the North, I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to make an Arryn king soon too. My cousin is still a child, they would master him to their whims.”

“Father always said that Yohn Royce was a man of honour…”

“He is,” Sansa agreed. “But I imagine being the warden to the new return of Arryn kings would be a position of honour, when you put it all in ahistorical perspective, the Vale lords would want to have their old Kings back,  they would reason that if the Northeners are doing it as well, why not they?”

Robb was not their King, neither was Jon – the Vale was a different principality entirely. They were natural allies and the North would need to make sure that alliance only deepened.

“Yohn Royce would want to guide Sweetrobyn, perhaps even teach him as he’d teach his squire,” it would do her cousin good, but the image was so absurd. He was too sickly and spoilt, but she wished he would gain his health and live the happy childhood denied to him, to be a child like all other children. “other Vale lords might not be so honourable, some much more sly, and then of course there is Littlefinger who is the envy of all for having made Sweetrobyn his. Yohn Royce despises Littlefinger but his honour forbids him from striking him down. House Royce is the most powerful house in the Vale, second only to the Arryns and kin to us. Father made friends and allies when he fostered there. If the Vale lords had been allowed by their liege lady they’d have been fighting on Robb’s side the whole time, fiercely too.” Sansa trailed off, nearly regretful. “...the war might have already been over.”

“They don’t like Littlefinger and they have enough honour to have wanted to come to avenge father,” Jon said, “and your Aunt Lysa nearly killed the imp so they don’t like the Lannisters nor Southeners. It’s not strange to assume they  do not like that the only son to their beloved Jon Arryn is small and sickly, a puppet of the man they view as a foreigner….” Jon rubbed at his mouth thoughtfully. “The Vale lords can throw off Littlefinger, they only need an opportunity to do so.”

“There’s no use scheming and trying to turn them. Yohn Royce is a stubborn man, he won’t entertain anything underhanded unless he has  _ righteous _ cause to do so.”  _ You could confess you were a liar, you could tell them about Littlefinger, about the poison, about – _ Sansa cut that voice down, her chest tight with panic. She paused and marshalled herself so her internal feelings could match the calm exterior she so depended upon. “The other lords…some of them hate one another, some of them hate Littlefinger and even then it’s because he’s  _ bribed _ them to hate him as loudly as possible. Lyn Corbray for one is  _ paid  _ to be his enemy.”

She told him about how Lord Baelish became the Lord Protector of the Eyrie and the Vale of Arryn. How he had granted the Gates of Moon and the title of Keeper, along with its castles in perpetuity to Lord Nestor Royce and his descendants - in order to secure the support of Lord Nestor - thus forming House Royce of the Gates of the Moon.

_ Nestor _ Royce, she told Jon, was given what he believed was due to him for devoting so much of his life to the Arryn’s. When Jon Arryn had served as Hand in the capital and it was Lord Nestor who served as Steward in his steed. And yet, where the Arryn widow neglected him and spurned his proposal of marriage – it was Petyr Baelish who rose him up, who gave him his due.

“ _ Nestor _ is Petyr’s man now. He has a daughter too, Myranda – she was a friend and I don’t doubt there having been a great possibility that she herself might marry him. No matter how you look at it they are tied and tied. I know you see him as a vile opportunist but Lord Baelish has made many friends – through coin or favour or mummery. Would it surprise you if I told you that people even find him likeable?” She saw Jon make a face, balking at the idea. She sighed. “He does not reveal his true self. All they see is a small, witty courtier, a working man. By the time they see anything else it is too late.”

“He has declared for the North, many of his Southron friends  _ will  _ desert him, many of them are our enemies.”

She smiled winningly at him, pleased that he was understanding. “He is with fewer allies, true. He’s in a precarious position as of now, it’s possible he might lose Harrenhal, the Riverlands – he’d been promised as warden. Some of his public holdings destroyed by the Faith of the Seven…but let us not underestimate Littlefinger’s ability to cultivate a certain appearance and orchestrate the opposite.”

“Then the Vale lords they’re eager to fight this war and they’d do away with him if they could. Sansa, these seem like parts of a solution.”

Aunt Lysa had kept many of the unblooded young knights out of the war, they’d be eager to prove their martial prowress. Eager to fight whatever fight Jon suggested if it pleased them, but not without their lord’s leave. It was impossible to pull them into a conspiracy against Littlefinger.

“It’s impossible to scheme against him using the Vale knights. Lynn Corbray is seen as Lord Baelish’s biggest enemy when in actuality he is in his  _ employ _ , it’s his job to feign hatred and anger towards him, joining every conspiracy against Petyr only to inform on the conspirators. And Corbray is only  _ one _ name out of hundreds that I do not know who do the same. Should you stir the Vale lords up or even attempt to sway them, play with them…Petyr will  _ know _ .”

Jon waited mulling it over, when he spoke it was with a delicate carefulness, as if there was still anything that remained that might surprise her. “It seems to me that Littlefinger is only powerful so long as your cousin lives.”

A soft laugh escaped her. She often suspected that there might come a time when Petyr might do away with Sweetrobyn.  _ I would have married him and he’d be dead soon after, no one would think it suspect _ . He was sickly after all.

Or he would have married her to the next presumptive heir of the Vale and killed _ him _ instead. The Vale, the North – and in time even the Riverlands if he did wish her queen. She did not put it past Littlefinger to find a way to manage it all – all of it would have been hers.

_ His. _

She never thought she would see the day when Littlefinger would want Sweetrobyn to  _ live. _ That his hold on the Vale should depend on that singularity now? Even if Sansa allowed an engagement between herself and her cousin – a possibility that drained her to think about but one that was ever still an option at some point that she might need to take – Littlefinger had destroyed her trust so thoroughly that surely he couldn’t hope to think that she would give any of what was due to her to his ownership or his governance? Not blindly.

He would not trust himself loved enough by her as to risk now giving her the power of such a powerful political marriage, would he?

Any man she would have married would have met his end at his hands, Sansa had realised not long ago.

Hadn’t it been so with Tyrion as well? The imp had stood a mockery of a trial and been punished for Joffrey’s murder. She’d known he couldn’t have done it for one of the killers had been an outrageous old woman who had never held a blade in her life unless it were slathered in jam, poised over a buttered scone.

Joffrey’s true murderer had been standing in the belly of a ship, barely steps away, watching her mouth with unparalleled focus, eager to impart upon her an  _ education. _

_ Lord Tyrion was very kind to me _ , Ramsay had shucked up her skirts and bent her over.

She’d thought that she wished she’d been married to Tyrion instead. She did not think she could ever have loved him the way she’d hoped she would love Willas – but then did she ever truly believe she could love Willas? Lord Tyrion…he had been gentle with her. He was a Lannister and horrendous to look at in the eyes of a soft, young fool who had been raised on the  falsities and stupidity of songs. He was an imp but it was his beautiful kin who had the twisted, monstrous hearts that their fair and lovely features hid. He was clever and kind in his way, but he’d still wanted to fuck her hadn’t he? All of them did.  _ Even now, they still do. _

_ Some women like tall men _ . Margaery had said, sisterly.  _ Some like short men. Some like hairy men. Some like bald men. Gentle men, rough men, ugly men, pretty men _ …

That Sansa - the  _ old _ Sansa might have come to like her little husband. She remembered him taking her hand at Joffrey’s wedding, how together their humiliation was being given to them. The acrobatic imps paid to dance and fool, and call themselves Robb Stark, the Young Wolf. Joffrey had roared with laughter when one of the mummers had put on a wolfhead sown out of leather. Sansa had seen the poor stitching and as the entire court clapped and shrieked in delight, she felt absently something in her going cold, something that had frozen forever.

A traitor’s daughter and the Lannister imp, her fingers had tightened their grip on his firm fist.  _ Both of us made to be punished and disgraced. _

The girl Sansa had been then, frightened and hair in the Southron style, an angry meek thing. She could have loved him in time. She would have learnt to love him. It was in that girl’s nature.

Sansa was no longer that girl, she thought with a morbid sweetness that if she were to meet that girl again she would send her someplace warm or kill her. Spare her the coming horror, winter was for wolves, not for children.

Her mouth twisted _. I will never love anyone. _

Jon’s voice roused her from her bleak musings, “They would not leave Robert Arryn unprotected and neither would Littlefinger but this is a boy far on a… on a blasted mountain! As removed from interfering as possible. Whatever the Vale’s decisions will be Littlefinger’s in truth.”

He grew more and more frustrated as he spoke, as if the circumstances themselves were audacious for the neatness in which they had proceeded. That such a man could be vulnerable but in truth, utterly not – with an abundance of enemies but secure in his friends. That Littlefinger could have so much power, that he could not be toppled because the Vale Knights that mattered were too  _ honourable _ for them to be sure of.

Sansa considered instead. The Vale army was vast… The men that had intervened had only been the mounted knights. The rest were probably still at the Vale protecting their lord or wherever else Littlefinger might have deployed them. He had only brought his creatures. She hadn’t all the information yet but Sansa had spent time in her Aunt’s household and observed. She was certain they were at least twenty thousand strong.  _ All under his command. _

_ All still in the Vale? _

“Yes,” Sansa sighed, “He may not bear arms but he is a very dangerous man. The most dangerous I know.”

“Worse than Ramsay?” Jon asked quietly, so sensitive to her.

She smiled, weary. “Worse than Cersei, Ramsay. Worse than Umber, Karstark, the entire enemy host.”

“…You won’t let me kill him.”

“I can’t stop you, Jon. Of that you have made quite clear,” she firmly ignored his look of hurt. Why should it hurt him? It was true. He knew very well his own stubbornness and hers. She’d gone to bed after their argument in the tent the night before the battle, still shaking with it. Now he was King, hesitant to understand that they were rarely denied, and that Kings who did not understand rarely survived long. “I can only  _ advise _ you against it. Let us put it this way. Littlefinger is our enemy, but he is our  _ enemy’s _ enemy. He has declared for the North loudly, so loudly that no sovereign will take him again if he is known to betray us, for he has betrayed too many to be trusted again. He’s already turned his cloak enough times that someone will come forward and decide him a traitor for true and too dangerous to take on as an ally. He wants me in his grasp, he wants the Riverlands, the Vale, the North, all of it. All his goals align with ours as of now. He is our ally but  _ not  _ our friend.”

“I suppose it’s clever. When Lord Baelish declared for us it would be taken to be understood that _ Robert Arryn _ wished it so…” he met her eye, and she dared not look away. “When he declared for the North he was preparing that it would be  _ you _ who would lead, not I.”

Sansa did not deny it.

“Sansa – “

“Let’s not fight about this again, please Jon.”

Then he only spoke at Sansa’s prompting nod, continuing. “He was careful that this declaration come before the Knights of the Vale swore for us so they would be in agreement and he would be a man who set the standard and  _ they _ who followed it.” Jon’s face twisted with horror and surprise, “and we cannot move against him.”

“Not the way you want to.” Sansa said, “removing Littlefinger would depend on Sweetrobyn’s death as of now. Trying to make his men shuck him off will be impossible, again,  _ as of now _ . The Vale lords would consider it dishonourable, they’re easy to offend on those grounds. Yohn Royce could be ours in time but not even he would turn against Littlefinger without due cause. Trying to gather the Vale knights  _ to _ one will alert Littlefinger. He will move against you quicker then. He won’t let anyone endanger his hold on Robert. If Robert dies now then everything goes to Harold Hardying who is the heir presumptive. Lord Baelish won’t let the Vale go so easily.”

Jon thought.

“You’re to be careful, Jon. They all want something, it is going to take more than a rallying speech to make their interests align along with yours. Right now Littlefinger has something important in his favour, he could tear you down so long as they aren’t convinced you rose from the dead. He could label you a deserter. A whisper campaign, he is a master at conspiracy. We cannot do anything about him now, in time we will know, an opportunity will provide itself.”

Jon looked at her strangely and Sansa clamped her mouth shut.

She was lying to him, Sansa would be attending vigilantly to such undercurrents before she’d entreat her brother to worry of any of it. He would never let her act on her own.

At length he said, “You’re very…” Sansa prepared for the blow, steeling herself against whatever word Jon would say that would shatter this peace. “You’re very informed.”

“Information makes the difference between dying and surviving.” Sansa said simply, “I wasn’t very informed before. I learned too slowly, I’m still learning. Much slower than I’d like. You’re picking up really quickly, of course.”

“Of course,” he echoed.

Sansa smiled tightly. Soon they fell into silence. As Jon had said, the South for now would have to wait - if only for a little while - there was much to attend to here.

There would be lords coming to see this new King, to test his worthiness. She expected it of the Manderlys, who had not been present. Whether the snows and geography was to blame for a delay, or the Manderlys had no intentions to come, Sansa assumed would reveal itself with time.

The Northern lords were not the heart of hospitality when it came to the wildlings, who needed to be relocated. That the wildlings had fought for the North when the the nobles had not might be enough to make the Northeners reluctant to further shame themselves, for now.

They had bled for Winterfell. Jon was too stubborn to be cowed into chasing them off,  they would stay on the lands here, they’re a small host. More might come from beyond the Wall, once Jon inevitably sent riders. The lords wouldn’t like it, but her brother would be a fool to let himself be surrounded by the armies of outsiders and not have the added defence and assurance of his own host of dedicated followers close at hand. It wasn’t just sentiment.

The Umbers still held the last hearth, would they be an obstacle to the wildlings cross through to Winterfell? Or were they too weak? A majority of them had been killed in the battle, the few surviving were prisoners to be tried, would Jon forgive them these prisoners as he had the other Northern houses? Would any of the Umbers and the Karstarks come for revenge? or to bend the knee?

The wildlings may be in danger still, if Jon meant to evacuate them as he’d said.

The Greatjon was dead, neither Sansa nor Jon knew who held the last hearth now. The Karstarks had devoted so little men to the Bolton army in this battle that they might as well have not brought any at all. Had Ramsay been the victor Sansa had no doubt he’d be on his way to the Karstark fort to kill them for their veritabel abstaining.

The Umbers were few, but dangerous, moreso if they were foolish enough to rejoin forces with the Karstarks.

But it was likely still they would hear of Jon’s benevolence - would they come to beg forgiveness? Would Jon give them it?

Could Sansa?

Two knocks on the door. Jon straightened, immediately suspicious, she saw his hand spring to his sword. Sansa leaned forward and lightly touched his wrist, “It’s the servants,” she said gently. His mouth twisted, stubborn, it was late at night after all. Sansa called out. “Enter.”

Jon watched the servants with surprise, seemed confused when they bowed and scraped, and even more confused when they came in with but one trunk between them. Jon had such few possessions after all. “What is this, Sansa?”

“You’re the King,” Sansa said, watching them set his things down. “These are your rooms.”

“ _ You are the lady of Winterfell _ .”

“You are the lord,” Sansa returned firmly. “and a King after all. It would be inappropriate for you to stay where you do.”

Jon stood stiffly, “I had these rooms prepared for  _ you _ .”

She saw the servants attend to their tasks with concentration. Keen to ignore the matters of their masters, or rather, Sansa knew, listening intently. Every word they overheard would be known by twenty more. Sansa remained sitting, bearing the same impatient patience her mother had exuded so well. “Jon, please.”

“Stop,” Jon ordered sharply and all commotion ended, Sansa sat breathlessly still to see him look so. He sounded so much like her lord father then, so rarely angered.  _ A black temper, your father had.  _ It eddied strangely in her, raised gooseflesh. A painful kind of thrill. “All of you.”

“Jon,” Sansa attempted gently.

“ _ You will not move a single thing into this room _ .”

The servants did as they were told, waiting quietly for the next order. Well trained creatures, none of them theirs. Sansa saw how commanding he was, how none of them dared defy him. So she finally stood and addressed them with a voice that brooked no room for argument. “You have heard your King,” she said. “So pack my things instead.”

Before he could protest this neat circumvention of his orders, Sansa took Jon’s hand and pulled him towards the trellis that put the rest of the night from them. He came with her stiffly, she tugged at him, and pressing the cold glass to the balcony outward and pulled him after her.

When they stopped the door was open a scant few inches, anyone who looked through would see the two of them close together, Jon with his teeth ground, bearing down grimly on her and Sansa winding her hand so that their fingers intertwined. She knew the touch unnerved him, she knew perhaps that she would always unnerve him but she saw his features set and though she saw him swallow she knew he would be determined not to let her distract him from his anger.

“We cannot fight in front of the servants,” Sansa said gently and shook her head at his scowl. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you but there wasn’t time – and I knew you’d behave foolishly.”

“Foolishly?” Jon jerked his head back, incensed, “How can you expect me to be allow this? Already, it’s too much – it’s enough – it’s too much!”

She knew how he must feel. Guilt, sleeping in the bed where Lady Stark and Lord Stark had lain and loved, he the bastard, unwelcome. Bastards were not made in such beds, certainly not made to inherit them. Their shades would hate him.

She held onto his hand tightly. Half of the times she’d touched Jon it had been with surprising urgency, this was another one of the times where it was something else entirely. Something learnt.

She did not rebuke him for the volume with which he had spoken, Jon rarely raised his voice, the servants would have heard anyway, if any of them were worth their wages she knew they would be skilled in listening even through walls.

Instead, Sansa brushed her thumb over the rise of one of his knuckles, to feel her own heart beat fast. She’d forgotten the coarse, torn skin of it that told her again of the violence he’d done for their family and for her.

The violence he might do again.

It was deliberate, touch. Littlefinger had been overly familiar, when he would graze her cheek or take her shoulders in hand, steering her, an assertion of possession and control. It had gentled, guided, taken liberties. He used to impart knowledge to her, his ring cool against her cheek, his hands on her shoulders, his mouth on her mouth. Like a father, not like a father at all. A reminder, a promise, she didn’t know. Sometimes it had comforted her, as having the reassurance of dangerous men who swear not to hurt you does, sometimes it had frightened her, as having the attention of dangerous men who swear to protect you does, sometimes it had thrilled her, this suggestion of want. The idea of maybe learning this trick too, of toying with a man older than her, of playing with a man who played with others, who appreciated the game like it really was a game, that she might be worthy of being a player, by his side or shielded by him.

Jon was her brother and it was Arya who had never hesitated to hug him, Sansa was not familiar yet. It was one way of controlling the situation, if she could unsettle him.

She twisted her wrist so her fingers could fit more firmly through the gaps between his, it felt somehow more intimate than anything she’d have done before. The rough shape of his palm and odd contrast to the soft, untried skin of her own, a pulse that might touch her own. She made herself look down regretfully at their joined hands. “I won’t be able to sleep, thinking of you in your old rooms.” His breath caught when she skimmed his knuckles and what a starved, poor thing her brother was, to be so fearful of her and yet tender still. This guardedness, reserve and unfamiliarity made him the only man she could bear touching. Littlefinger had taught her well and she would hate herself later. “Aren’t you my brother?”

Jon averted his eyes, weary and stubborn still.

“Well, aren’t you?” Sansa demanded beseechingly, “If it were Robb I’d have had him in these rooms too. You are a King, Jon. It’s kind of you to have prepared them for me but you are so wrong to insist I remain in them. Please stay here, as Robb would have, as King, as my eldest brother.”

“My old rooms – “

“How appropriate do you think that will be?” she tried to catch his eye, serious and asking him to refute the sense. “Do you expect me to sleep here and for the King in the North to be placed in his old rooms like the son of a minor steward?”

“Oh? They suited me well when I was your bastard half-brother.”

It pricked her, shame turned her chest hot but she knew that no matter the truth of it, the resentment he told her he did not feel but had and still did – he did it to unsettle her as well, he wanted to make her angry to distract her from the matter, but she could not let it distract her.  _ If I fight with him I’m lost. _

The snow was light, feathery as it fell and when she lifted one hand to reach for him and turn his sullen jaw again, she saw it catch on his mantle. His eyes were set away from her, his skin warm to the frozen touch.  “JI’m sorry for what happened before, it wasn’t fair to you. You are a Stark – “

“I am a Snow – “

“You are my brother,” Sansa snapped, final. “my  _ King _ . You must act like it.”

“You are the lady of Winterfell – “

“By rights, you are my brother, you are the Lord of Winterfell not I – “

“By rights! I am a bastard, a  _ Snow _ , don’t give me rights that aren’t mine. I’ve been saddled with a crown that isn’t mine, I won’t take it a step further and attempt to inherit what isn’t mine. Winterfell belongs to you! Fight me on anything Sansa but do not fight me on this.”

“When you were made Lord Commander did you remain bedded down amongst your brothers, did you fight this distinction of office?” Sansa cut through calmly, and when he looked reluctant to agree with her she knew she had won. “No, you took up the Lord Commander’s rooms.”

“That’s different, Lord Commander Mormont was dead. You, I will not usurp – “

“Usurp?” She tilted her head, shocked. “Jon, is that what you think you have done? Usurp me? Neither of us came here with the intention of becoming sovereigns, this isn’t your fault, Jon – they made you King. It’s the most dangerous thing they could have done to either of us, but it’s true, we need a united North to face what you say will come. It was inevitable that this would come about, whether or not Lyanna Mormont prompted it. You did not usurp anyone, by all rights after Robb fell it would have been you.”

“It would have been Bran.”

“Well, it should have been _ you _ .” Sansa said stiffly, “Now,  _ please _ . Take the rooms before we freeze out here, won’t you?”

The Lady of Winterfell, Jon had called her. The servants had heard it reaffirmed, they would report back to their masters, they would take note that she still had authority here, asserted by their King in private so they would not make the mistake of assuming otherwise to him in public. I am not a King’s sister alone, not just the word princess.  _ I am the Lady of Winterfell. _

Look how Lady Sansa loves her brother, how she honours him.

“You think you’ve convinced me?” Jon’s laugh was dark and cold, but his eyes were sad. “Sansa, you think you will say enough pretty things and convince me take these rooms?”

Her stomach fell. Her grip lax with surprise and Jon’s hands were free from the tangle of her fingers, a shallow gasp left her when he took her face in both his hands instead, the sweep of his  palms held her jaw, his thumbs resting softly under her eyes. “I deny it.” he said barely above a whisper. “I deny you.”

Her mouth parted with thwarted surprised, his eyes were sad but they were stubborn.

“I will take no more.”

Her eyes prickled, she hated it. She’d thought her skin was ice, yet she felt him and hated even more how gently he held her. “A king _ cannot _ \- ”

“I will move elsewhere then, somewhere close.” Jon said, reasonable and calm. She felt unreasonably that his touch itself was vengeance for her own. Under it, she was stayed, rendered momentarily meek. “Somewhere more appropriate.”

“Here.”

“I already - “

“No, here,” Sansa insisted, her voice wet. “In...in mother’s rooms,” she saw the pain in his eyes, the surprise, and saw too, his immediate reluctance. “Close to me,” and more firmly. “I will feel safe.”

“Sansa…” his eyes tightened in agony.

“If you won’t have father’s rooms, you may as well humour me.” she said quietly, “They will move your things to her rooms, we will have a shared solar.”

A frown pinched at his face, she worried and wondered, whether he thought it inappropriate now, not just incredibly cruel to make him sleep in the rooms of a woman who had hated him, but to have only an adjoining room between them.

His refusal to let her do this to herself turned her soft, made her wet-eyed. It was frustrating to be refused the first time, it was to deny her compulsion - Sansa did not like to fail. Would he refuse her a second time? Her request was cruel, but...

She felt his sigh on her face. He sounded defeated and wearily aware of this manipulation, but it was enough and Sansa smiled, “Good, I’d have returned to my own rooms if you refused anyway. Or I’d have tried, seeing as the servants told everything in it has been burned.”

He bristled just as quickly, “You can’t think to return to the rooms that  _ monster  _ – “

“I thought to reclaim them, to reclaim myself. He’s gone, he can’t hurt me. I cannot belong to what he did to me.” She sighed and brushed the snow from his shoulder,swallowing to feel her jaw still in his hands. His look sharpened with new awareness. She reached up to take them and if he had forgotten then Sansa had reminded him and Jon stiffened, tense. “but the rooms are no more, are they? It’s not matter, they were too far from you in the end – I think…” she straightened his cloak, “I’d have gone instead to my old rooms, the ones I shared with Arya as a child. They’re warm, they’re familiar. I’d have been be safe there.”

“Sansa…”

“But you’ve spared me that. I’m home, you are near me. No one can hurt me.” Sansa said, taking his hands, intertwining their fingers once more, firmly and pointedly joining them together. 

Her palm flush against the creases of his own, she wanted him to feel her heart through their hands if he could not hear it in her words.

She smiled and met his soft, dark eyes again, “My brother promised, didn’t he?”

* * *

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is drama~ and tbh? MY FAVOURITE OF THE EARLY CHAPTERS.
> 
> again, a lot of these chapters were written waaaay before season seven aired, way before we even got sneak peeks or teasers and i just wanna say - i am pumped by how much a lot of this fic sort of premonitions that stuff, albeit in its own way. i called so much of the season seven jonsa shit in this fic. but my fics better (not being arrogant or anything) - it's better coz this fic takes place in an AU season seven where jonsa fans actually got the trash we desired and wrote so much about. this fic is perpetual Jon and Sansa In Winterfell Fic. Just Doing Shit and Doing it Well, and Sometimes Fucking it Up
> 
> also, um, i have a problematic fave - (see the tags) - and there's always some kind of scene of this kind in every jonsa fic, and i took a really different angle with the power play and mind trickery here that's basically gonna be hit or miss with a lot of you. some of you will hate it (if you're boring) and some of you will be enjoying it (if you're open minded freaks who live for the drama in fics) - but this is how i intended to write this, so this is how it is written. i really hope yall like it tho. coz if you didn't think this was the kind of fic i was writing and you've been reading all this time, then idk what to say to you coz, the signs for how angsty and twisted the machinations of some people were gonna be? all there
> 
> again, thank you for all the lovely comments. as you can see, evidence by my speedy updates, feedback is loved and encouraging enough to make writers WANT to write. so DON'T BE SHY. TELL ME HOW MUCH YOU HATE ALL OF THIS/LOVE ALL OF THIS OR W/E.

you’re a bloody feral wolf-face I like you

 

 —  **Get Rid of All Controls** ,  _Alice Notley_

 

* * *

 

 

The torches are dim on the battlements and the coming dawn still dark blue when Jon goes out again, snow crunching beneath steps leaden with exhaustion.

And in the yard, with his lungs scraped empty with icy breath, his burned hand stings. Smoke from the battles pyres have floated away the rank smell of death and the air is bright and cold against his face.

In this moment Winterfell has a stillness then so deep and static it plunges him down into its centeredness. Here he had played with his brothers and Arya, here Hodor would lumber with Rickon whooping on his shoulders...

It was difficult to imagine that he had barrelled down Ramsay in this very yard, seen it splattered with arrow fletchings, stained with the blood of better men.

It is hard to imagine it in these small hours he has left before he must start again, move achingly forward. The air thick with his own breath and the wind soft against the walls, he walks through the yard with the laughter of his newly procured bannermen muffled by distance and ice. It reminds him of the last feast, slinking sullenly away while everyone drank. Hearing it on that night long ago had felt cruel, like they’d been laughing at him.

Tonight it seems only a soft song, like something heard from far away and deep beneath the wave, he sees it move and feels its current but it cannot touch him properly. The snow has slowed down to nothing. He is older now, perhaps even wiser.

Sansa’s rooms had been warm and he began to regret leaving her. He hoped that she did not come to see whether he kept his promise to sleep in her mother’s bed, he was more tired than he’d been in all his life but he could not bring himself to ease into her dead ladymother’s chambers yet.

There was an emptiness in him that he could almost pretend to be clarity, but the truth of it was he did not know what to do, in the dying night he could not properly agonize over it. So much had happened. Except for a scant few moments of sleep Jon had been on his feet since the battle.

His brother in the crypts. The Lords of the Vale, an unexpected Kingmaking… He had sent the Red Woman away and had felt the unnerving weight of Littlefinger’s scrutiny all the while. The Valemen and smaller Northern forces that had accompanied their lords were camped beyond the gate, side by side with the Free Folk’s tents, none would ignore each other’s proximity for long. When would the peace break?

He sighed heavily, they would kill one another if they weren’t careful. He had to be careful with a great many things now too. His sister had said it wasn’t just wights he had to face but that the end of the world would end much sooner should he ignore the threat posed by the South. He had to listen to her now, he owed her that at least. He wasn’t too proud to listen to her council and listening did not mean he always had to heed it, but he would listen.

The image of her in the crypts roused itself with startling clarity, he didn’t think he’d ever forget her standing before the place where stone modelled in their youngest brother’s likeness would soon be. He was learning the way she had of holding herself when she was thinking deeply.

She had had her gloves off, the soft cupped edge of her hand, bloodlessly white with her thumb dug so deep into the centre of her palm Jon was sure it hurt. Her face though had been a smooth mask, near vacant, staring ahead. She was so far away from him.

He’d been able to start reading this little about her; Sansa could be cool and closed off, alabaster and ice but her hands always gave her away. She would skewer the centre of her right palm and crush her knuckles together, whether to rub feeling into them or to distract herself from the urge to lash out, Jon did not know. But with him lash out she did. He cared about her deeply but he could not dismiss that they had had a way of provoking one another, evidenced in the days before the battle.

Tonight they had been at peace with one another despite Jon’s apprehensiveness about the entire ordeal, his fear about being given what was not his to take. Sansa had laughed, her face soft, gentled with emotion and called him a Stark again. His heart loosened, he was able to breathe a little easier. He didn’t want to fight with her anymore but he knew that he might not be able to help it in the future. He still remembered the colour high in her cheeks, the light bright in her eyes, they’d both been shaking but it was Sansa who was able to gather herself quickly, wrestling composure immediately and with far better grace. Leaving the tent, she had turned away from him. Eddard Stark’s shame, a bastard, an oathbreaker but he had never felt more worthless than he did then, failing her.

He didn’t want to see her look like that ever again.

Jon worked his feet more soundly into his boots as he walked, willing himself warm. Except for a pair of wildlings patrolling with spears in their hands, the yard was empty. They greeted him with a lofty  _ Lord Snow _ as they were wont to. Thorne had called him Lord Snow in derision, but it sounded different when the wildlings made the taunt their own.

Over time it had felt less cruel mocking, full of the warmth of teasing. It was Tormund’s doing. They might not have knelt, any of them, but they followed, they bet on Jon to lead them well.

The cries of King still thrummed in his chest, taking up the roar in terrifying war cry. The quick rally of men, the title undeserved, the reflexive surge of memory, remembering when he had been Lord Commander. They had chosen him then too and still rent him through with knives.

Jon walked only to clear his head and avoid his new rooms for as long as he was able, and meandering beneath the walls, cloaked by the cold he took no conscious route. He takes note of a man hunched on a stump by the kennels and slows to a stop.  _ Who could be approaching the hounds at such an hour, what is their business here? _

Jon approached quietly and the iron was sharp to his senses, the light snow at the man’s feet dark with the blooming stain. The rust-raw smell of blood carried on the thinning air but Jon did not draw his sword in haste.

He had seen this man before. One of Tormund’s kin if the red wick of his hair was any indication, his braided hair threaded through with white and his pelt muddied and torn. He grunts, looking up at Jon. “King Crow.”

He observes with no small amount of alarm the blood coming out of where the wildling grips his own arm. “You’re hurt.” He accused, irked and stoops to the examine the wound.

“Mauled, more like,” the wildling scoffs, consonants rumbling together. Gravelly. His eyes are wet from pain but his face screwed with annoyance as he waves Jon’s intention to help away.

So he had not been attacked by a man, then. Jon’s eyes fell on the shadowy insides of the kennel, his face hardening, and rises.

He tears off his sleeve with the ivory dagger at his hip. “You worried about me, eh?”

“You’ve been bit.”

“I’ve had worse,” he manages tying off the tourniquet over his wiry arm, so naked and pale the veins look blue.  Securing the end of the fabric with his teeth, he pulls and tightens the other end. Once he’s satisfied of the tourniquet tightness, he turns curious eyes on Jon. “Vicious fucking dogs but King Crow’s sister asked it of me and a girl like that is too pretty to refuse.”

The frown leaps to his face in surprise. “Asked what of you?”

Jon ignores the praise for Sansa, another time it would make him angry but the Free Folk say what they like and there’s mostly no harm in it. He is mostly too distracted by the second part of his statement. Sansa...soliciting wildlings? He tries to imagine his sister speaking to this man, muddied and dirty. Jon knows it shouldn’t surprise him after everything, but it still does, and he can’t quite fathom it.

The man looks at Jon like Jon is being particularly slow. “To train ‘em. See about getting them a kennel master and all. Food’s scarce, they’re good hunting dogs.”

“But?”

He sighed and shook his head. “they’ve been ill-treated and their master’s kissed it, don’t know if it can be done.”

“So you decided you needed to enter the kennels without help? What were you doing in there?”

“Tried to get a feel of them,” he shrugged, as though Jon were nought but a nagging septa. “though seems like they got a feel o’ me first, eh? More than a feel, the fucking beasts. No, crow, I thought I might try pull that Bolton bastard’s body out while I was at it. Burn it. Thought it wise. You wouldn’t want him to get up, corpse blue and start killing again, do you?” he jerked his chin and sniffed, “You should’a burned your brother too.”

Rickon belonged in the crypts with the Starks. Jon would never dare consider burning him. He lowered his chin, his voice grim with warning.  “The wights haven’t reached us yet.”

“ _ Yet. _ ”

“My brother is in the crypts,” Jon said dangerously cool. “where he belongs.”

“Aye, I suppose he is. What do I know of kneeler ways? Your sister is clever but I’m not like to be able to fulfil her charge, they’ve already been broken these hounds and they won’t want it done to them again, near rabid. Ate their own master, so it’s a tricky task. She wants them hunting which is sense enough for we’ll need more game than your pale shadow provides.”

“Our lady  _ is _ wise.”

Jon stiffened, knowing that voice all too well.

The ermine that lined his dark cloak was a fine grey, his clothes muted and yet cleanly cut, understated, yet undeniable well made. Lord Baelish wore it all with the effortless ease of a prince.

Elegant, Lord Baelish was a lithe man, small and well-groomed. He smiled at the wildling with something that nearly resembled warmth if not for the fact that it did not touch his eyes, and Jon saw that he bore the freezing air with an eerie indifference unlike a Southerner, whereas Jon and the wildling were deep in gloomy suffering of it this late into the night.

It was Littlefinger’s ability, Jon realized, to look at home anywhere.

Surrounding him is the clean, nose prickling scent of mint. Jon thought that Littlefinger was always too self-assured, he had the look of a man who knew more than he let on and seemed to be laughing at them with that knowledge.

Jon also knew however that it can be dangerous to look like you know more than you actually do. It is better to be dismissed as knowing less. It is better to be underestimated.

Jon does not know that whether he can take courage and pretend that Littlefinger only  _ cultivates _ the appearance of  all-knowing. It was best, as Sansa had suggested, that Jon assume that Littlefinger knew everything.

Most unnerving of all? He had not realized that Petyr Baelish was by him until he spoke. How quiet was this man?

The wildling grunts to cover his surprise too, “ _ Your  _ lady near got me killed, or will. But I’ll do her work, she’s promised me the second litter should any of these be of fucking use.”

Jon loathe to acknowledge Littlefinger, fastened his eyes on the kennel master instead, serious. “And what if they aren’t of use?”

_ What if they were too broken to be commanded? _ He thought with a chill.

The wildling’s shoulders rose and dropped, frank. “I’ve eaten hound before, King Crow. Lacks a lil’ something. They feed us or we’ll make meat of ‘em. As is the way of the world.” He took heavily to his feet, bearing a grin at Lord Baelish not unlike the same nasty leer Jon had often received when he’d been among them with Ygritte. It was full of a natural and vehement mistrust. “The crow’s been at the Wall, ‘suppose there’s chance he might get it down.” then here his derision deepened at the Lord Protector of the Vale. “But I don’t know if the rest o’ you Southernors can manage, you’ve got too much softness to your bellies. You’re too... _ delicate _ to survive that fare.”

The jab, it seemed, was as ineffective as the blows of a child for Lord Baelish is full of good cheer and unfailingly amiable. “Let us hope it does not come to that.”

The wildling’s makes a sour sneer. “My fucking  _ lords _ , I’ll be off before I bleed to fucking death.” Then to Jon he said, “King Crow, you ought to put that shadow of yours to use. Your sister’s pretty enough to tempt our folk and for a while we might even have sense not to steal her, but these southerners?” he did not bother to whisper, bending toward him. “have that look about ‘em. You’ve more to fear from kneelers than you do from us.”

Jon doesn’t answer, allowing the man to peel away, lumbering past them, muttering beneath his breath.

“My King,” Lord Baelish finally says in that whispy, well-bourne language. A snake, he bows his head deep.

Jon’s hand curls by his other side, and stiffly he returns the greeting. “Lord Baelish.”

They say nothing more and stare into the darkness of the kennels. He’d had Ramsay locked in here for Sansa to do what she willed with him. When he was told of what she’d done had he not felt a strange viciousness for her, an echo of satisfaction, that finally that monster was no more? And then he had felt belatedly, a remorse on the heels of that fiendish pleasure, almost cursory in its arrival, that he had allowed his sister to become a killer. What would Robb have said? What would he have done?

_ Your sister leapt from the ramparts, she ran through the ice, she bears the bruises and the scars of someone who expected to speak with the flinches given of the well-beaten, _ he saw the elegance with which she passed him, her sure and swift steps taking her down to the Godswood as the men who’d fought against them begged and the few servants that had been loyal to the Stark cause and made ghosts in the dungeons for it stared at Jon with the some feiry love that had the vicious intensity of hatred as he delivered judgement over their captors.

She had Lady Stark’s steel. But he saw, wrapped in grey, uncowed by the cold that would eat a Southerner alive, that she had her father’s too.

Ramsay was not his to kill, and his sister’s pain not his to judge its answer.

He wondered what Lord Baelsih saw, looking into the dark of these kennels. Did it frighten him? Did it make him wary?  _ Tuck your tail between your legs and leave us be. _ Jon wanted it more than anything.

There was much more his sister had not revealed about this man and Jon was sure she would not, even in time. It was not only a well-learned caution that had forbidden her from trusting Jon with the knowledge of the Vale knights arrival, or even the fear of not knowing whether she should warn of aid that might not even arrive. There was shame in her. When she spoke of Lord Baelish there was  _ shame _ in Sansa. Jon’s blood was a black surge and a dark voice told him that it would be so easy to break this man now.

It would be so easy to grab him by the throat and ram his skull against the iron bars. It would be so easy to kill this man who had sold his sister to monsters and still stood about, hovering like a whore peddler owed his due.

Jon ground himself to the very ice and forced himself to uncurl his fist, his breath bit off between his teeth, Jon spoke with icy levelness. “I never had chance to thank you, Lord Baelish.”

“Hm?” Littlefinger tilted his head, pulled from idle distraction. “Whatever for?”

Jon, though incensed by the pretence, kept silent and still, his face stone.

Littlefinger wasn’t troubled in the least. “Yohn Royce heartily praises you, Lord Snow. They would have joined your brother’s men had it not meant going against the expressed orders of Lady Catelyn’s sister, Lysa. You will find that most of them are ashamed of not having joined earlier and if you dig deep enough you may use that shame to your advantage.”

Jon was stunned. Sansa had warned him of this creature, and here the man was dispensing advice. His tone thoughtful, his voice persuasive in its reasonableness, its logic.

Did he think to buy Jon’s trust, after everything? Was he _ mocking _ him?

What of your own shame? he should ask this man.  _ It is a simple thing,  _ Sansa’s quiet assertion in the crypts returned to him.   _ he wants my forgiveness and to return to my good graces _ .

She meant to use Littlefinger’s shame as Littlefinger meant Jon to use the shame of the Northerners.

It troubled him but Jon’s voice was cold in reproach. “That is not the man I mean to be.”

“No?” Petyr Baelish smiled, hands clasped in front of him, “but we all become what we must, if we mean to survive. I should be humbled and accept your thanks, Lord Snow, play the part of the courtier but you do not trust me, and pretending that you do or that you ever might? This is a waste of energy that might best be expended elsewhere.”

It was the exact opposite of what he expected of this man - Jon had expected flattery, slyness, but this sudden confident admission of his duplicity?

This forthrightness confused him. Angered him, because even in its perceived frankness Jon was sure it was yet another one of these misdirections Sansa had warned him of.

She had stopped him in the doorway before she changed for bed.  _ He will say things that confuse you, he will pretend and pretend, and you must not trust him even when he acts against his own self-interests, it’s a trick, it’s sleight of hand. While you are so busy being confused by Littlefinger he is sliding a knife between your ribs. _

Sansa had stilled at the mention of knives, catching herself. She paled _ ,  I didn’t mean to – _

Jon had smiled tightly,  _ I know. _

He had smiled, amused by this discomfort and this surprise. She’d teased him about dying when they’d been in the crypts, but in the light of her rooms she’d been softer, more careful of hurting him. In Lord Stark’s quarters she had become sweeter.

Littlefinger didn’t mind his silence, Southerners did so love to hear themselves speak. “I told your father not to trust anyone either but he did not listen. In King’s Landing you trust no one, in the courts of Kings you are careful. In this wilderness of snow you are not so far removed from the very same rules that governed that place, rules that punish those who lack intrigue and shrewdness. So yes, Lord Snow, you may thank me for my men but you must properly thank your _ sister.  _ They may cheer and cry your name today but we did not come to rally under your banners to protect your non-existent claim. They came for your sister, they will stay for your sister.”

Jon had said to Sansa in her rooms, _ “When he declared for the North he was preparing that it would be you who would lead, not I.” _

She had not denied it.

Sansa had said that Littlefinger would pretend to be his friend, hadn’t she? He had expected this vile man to come spewing sweet flattery, to work himself into the good graces of his family.

_ You must be careful of Littlefinger, he will be your friend for as long as it suits him _

Those had been Sansa’s words, full of fear for Jon, making him promise to be careful.

Littlefinger was doing the exact opposite of what she’d warned.

Jon didn’t know what to think.

“As did you, I suppose,” Baelish gives a brief flash of teeth, conspiratorial. “Come for your sister too. I suppose it is worth it now that you have Winterfell under your command, and the honour of having killed another bastard more brute than you.”

Jon did speak again, without inflection, unamused. “I don’t consider any of this as a prize, Baelish. A crown I didn’t ask for, a claim I did not vye. Aye, I did come for Sansa. I will always come to her aide.”

Baelish looks at him searchingly, as if he sees something in Jon he can’t properly articulate. “You will won’t you, you’ll always come for her? You believe it.”

Should that be so strange? Jon regarded the man with a mistrustful scowl.

“Though I suppose it was all too easy to bring you here, Sansa always has had a way about her, hasn’t she?”

Jon’s body was at war, whether to flush with anger or freeze with shame. Anger because Littlefinger insinuated that Sansa’s desperation was sly - to remind Jon that she was beautiful and that men wanted her, to suggest that Jon was but a ploy to her in achieving her goals. It wasn’t true, he  _ knew _ that it wasn’t.

And shame, for he had refused to fight for their home at first. It was that ugly letter that had convinced him to act - Littlefinger must have known that.

“Lord Baelish,” Jon ground out, “I will stop you there before you force me to answer your provocation with force.”

“My lord is kind,” Baelish exclaimed humbly in thanks, “Nothing would embarrass me more than being put in a position where I’d be forced to answer bannermen about why violence has been done against me and by whom. Kind King Jon has the forbearing civility to warn me before he would alienate men who have just yesterday died for him.”

_ You arrived at an opportune moment _ . Without warning. Early enough as to catch Ramsay’s forces in a trap but late enough for Jon to have possibly have perished before their arrival, leaving Sansa the clear and sole choice to the wardenship. That was what Jon had wanted too, hadn’t he? To install his sister to her rightful claim. But where Jon would have wanted Sansa to rule, Lord Baelish had ruled through enough heirs already not to intend on using Sansa in the same manner. He would have made a puppet of her and perhaps…

Perhaps he still did.

_ He’ll make a puppet of  _ **_you_ ** _ if you let him. _

He could not lay hands on this man, what kind of message would it send to those who had fought for him? That Jon was a man who rewarded aid with violence? Further, there would be questions as to why Jon would do such a man violence, questions that might be used to dishonour his sister, to make known to them Littlefinger’s amorous intentions toward her.

She had been by his side all these years after all, Jon didn’t want to believe it.  _ They will only assume unkind things about her, blame her for this man’s ugly want of her. _

Jon angled his body to face him, his jaw twitched in anger. “You swore for the North, you pretend to be behind me in public. Why do you sow discontent like this, Lord Baelish? Why do you want me to fear my sister?”

“Discontent? I am being sincere, someone might say as I have been out of practise that I am not very good at it. You have been suitably warned of me but that does not mean your sister means to protect you forever. I swore for the North, Sansa  _ is _ the North to me, to many. I am here for Sansa.”

“You should be calling her _ Lady _ Sansa,” Jon warned, “You are too familiar. You sold her to the Boltons and think she would look upon you – that I would  _ let _ you touch her – “

“Aye, I sold her to the Boltons, Lord Snow.” Lord Baelish’s words had a heat and sharpness of something like bitterness, anger, quiet as they were. Jon was surprised to hear it, expecting only poisonous syrup from him. “I will never regret another thing more in my life,” and for a moment he looked like young, his face soft with sincerity. “I underestimated my enemies and misused my dear friends. I mean to seek her forgiveness and to earn her trust once more, I endeavour to do that for the rest of my life.”

“You mean to earn her trust...by scheming behind her back to drive faults into my trust in her?” Jon said, darkly admiring of the irony. “No, you will keep away from her.”

“Do you command it?”

“ _ What? _ ”

“Oh, apologies, you have not understood me yet. I do not like your command and unfortunately cannot be forced to obey it, or you for that matter...not unless you would make the demand of me in public,” Baelish said, pausing to utter a conciliatory sigh, “and that would bring undue attention to all parties, wouldn’t it? So no, Jon Snow, I must disobey you. As I have said, I did come here for Sansa, I will stay for her. I will leave only when she asks.”

“Only when she asks? How noble of you.”

“You are angry with me,” Lord Baelish looked at him as though he were a child, despairingly patient of him, fond in his scorn. “Are you angry that I want to stay for her? Or is it knowing that even now, even after  _ everything _ , that she would never send me away?”

It only made him more furious, to hear this spoken. He curled his fingers into his belt, he held on tight, so tight he felt the blood start to seep through the hide of his gloves.

_ He is playing with you, _ and knowing it made him no less angry, still made his body burn.

Sansa would send Littlefinger away were it not for the Vale knights, he told himself. Littlefinger’s purr, his cool taunting, his ability to never miss his mark…

Jon could not give himself away to anger. He lowered his chin and tilted his head, grim and mocking. “How very earnest you are in your affections.”

Littlefinger smiled as though he had witnessed some clumsy evasion and not the threatening growl of a brother willing to kill for his sister. “I am earnest in watching her. I want her, of course you know. But look - yes, into the dark. Can your eyes make it out? See before you a man barely man anymore. Ramsay Bolton was a bastard risen high too, my lord. Now, he sits in the dark there. Perhaps he should have been shrewder when he played the game.”

“None of this is a game.”

“Isn’t it? Was it not some jape that they made you king? You are so angry with me Lord Snow. And yet, you do not think your sister will send me away.  _ Why _ is that?”

Jon quietened. Let him speak, he told himself. He is drawing a trap made out of words.

“You need me, I want her, true. But you have nothing to fear from me Jon Snow, for as long as you are dear to her, I will endeavour so that you will always be kept alive. But are you?” he looked Jon’s way, sly, “dear to her?”

Was he? Words thickened in Jon’s throat, he and Sansa had never been close, but surely that no longer mattered? She told him that it didn’t, she called him Stark and held him close to her. What did she see when she looked at Jon? Did she hope to see Robb instead? A better brother, someone who had loved her better? Someone she loved better.

_ But what does Sansa think I see when I look at her? Arya? _

_ We are the last two,  _ he still wore the mantle she had made him. He still remembered the sting of her fingertips red, how she had pulled his sleeve and put her arm beneath his, carefully, hesitantly but with the strange jerkiness in the motions to be found of someone who could barely help themselves.

Sansa trusting him, or trying very hard to. After it has become so fatal to her.

He felt a great tenderness well up in him, an awful bruising tenderness carving out his lungs. Warring with his despair.

“You warn me of her, you mean me to mistrust her. What do you gain from betraying my sister further with your plotting? After all you have done -”

“I made an error in judgement.” he said softly.

“Did you? I understand you so rarely make those that the few you do can only be thought deliberate.” it was Jon’s turn to test for a reaction, pitching his voice to a low hiss. “ I would have given her your head had she not begged me from it.”

It’s true. Viciously, Jon knows it, it isn’t what his father would have felt and if it was, it wouldn’t be what a good man would reveal. Littlefinger’s eyes flash, not with fear then but a thrilled surprise. He did not expect to be told so, perhaps he feels flattered. Perhaps it pleases him. Like Sansa refusing to have him killed is a grand act of love or affection!

There is a game being played here that Jon should have left abruptly before they could reach this point, he is giving too much away of himself, he does not know what, he doesn’t know if he’s making any of the correct moves.  _ Make him think you more fool than you are. _

_ Make him think you ruled by your heart and your anger. _

“Your sister is a political woman, she already had that in her long before I came along. She was clever. But I have coaxed it up stronger. She understands you and I are worth more to her alive,” Lord Baelish says reasonable and collected, but Jon has already seen it. That burning desire.  _ Whether or not he loves Sansa, he does covet her.  _ “Yes,  _ both _ of us, Jon Snow. I do not for a moment believe myself forgiven just as you should not believe yourself safe and secure.”

“My sister stood by me in the hall,” Jon drawled, dismissive. “your words are poor, petty lies. ”

“And what would she have gained from standing against you in this moment? Northern men, fools as they are, have put down their swords for you, not her. She would have gained nothing except their contempt if she had presumed to challenge you, even if she has claim. She bides her time.”

“You would have seen Sansa be warden of the North and ruled through her. You came here to install her into power with the hopes of making her your puppet. But now you pour poison into my ear like a man who has had a change of heart, do you no longer want her in this very same position of power? Now you want me to believe it was all for naught and you have changed your mind about making her Queen, your pawn?” A suspicious thing occurred to him, if Lyanna Mormont had not risen to make him King would Littlefinger have slyly stepped forward and swayed the crowd into looking to Sansa instead? “You think me some fool, Lord Baelish. I know you came to make her Queen, now you act as though you would undermine that. You resent me for being made King, and yet advise me as though you mean to keep me as one. What has changed?”

“Certain...personal revelations have come to light. I would not hasten to put a crown on the head of a woman whose first act would be to see me slain, and do it cleverly enough to avoid political repercussions. I care for her but we have fallen out, it’s no secret, has she not told you so?”

They had met in the godswood this morning, Jon had not asked, reluctant to start another argument, and perhaps, fearful of what he would hear if he did.

Littlefinger’s smile was then the smile of a well-sated cat.

Personal revelations, it sounded unsavoury, the way it pleased Littlefinger suggested something less innocent. But Sansa would never have...

Jon laughed suddenly, surprised. “You asked her to marry you.”

Littlefinger’s smile remained in place but his eyes were cold as thin ice over frozen water. Jon’s laughter had been a bark of pure derision, an astounding poison.

“You asked her to marry you and she refused.” he grinned, the sneer cutting up each corner of his mouth. He shook his head, smiling cruelly all the while. “She would not have you. She  _ hates _ you.”

“She hated you when you were children.”

“I am her  _ brother _ ,” Jon found himself saying with threatening pride, astoundingly strong in confidence of this. “who are you but a whoremonger panting after her mother? Sansa won’t take you for her husband, that door is closed forever for you.” Jon’s smile soured. “You have a lot of nerve to stand before me and sow discord. Pretending you care for my safety.”

“A dead king is of no use to me, not when I need him to kill ghosts beyond the wall before they kill me.”

The way he says it, Jon doubts Baelish fully believes in the Others. Jon can’t pin it down, Littlefinger spins stories about Sansa, about both of them being capable of wanting his death, of Sansa achieving it. He says he needs Jon and yet does not believe in the threat with which he  _ says _ he needs Jon for. He calls them ghosts, as he might call them fancies from a song.

Has he caught Littlefinger out, is this a verbal slip, or an intended, carefully placed one?

Jon nodded his head emphatically, with mock thoughtfulness. “Ah, yes, you had a use for Sansa too, didn’t you? You think I don’t see how you look at her? I would kill you for that alone.”

“You think her some innocent, really? Aye, Lord Snow your sister is inordinately lovely, if you say that it has escaped your notice you would either be a liar or blind. She is more beautiful than Cersei could have ever dreamed to be, and lovelier than her mother ever was.”

Jon blazed to life, one moment he was stood, braced as possible and another moment he heard the whine and thud of the steel bars, the groan they made with Littlefinger’s body slammed against them.

The fine ermin was slippery in his throttling fists, Jon had hauled him up, snarling and shaking with anger. “I will rip the tongue from your body."

“For what?” Littlefinger wondered, much too calm for a man whose feet were dangling from the ground. For a man moments from having his neck broken in a yard empty of witnesses. Dark shapes roused themselves in Jon’s mind, dark shapes came out from behind Littlefinger, stirring in curiosity. “Because your sister is beautiful and I am meant to ignore this truth? I am charmed but not alone in being so. I have been with your sister for more than a year, in the Eyrie I was hers and she was mine, she was my bastard daughter do you know?  _ Alayne _ ,” Lord Baelish told Jon, savouring the taste of the name like it was sweet honey. “for mine own mother. But such a beautiful daughter...oh, _ easy _ there, there’s that bastard blood of yours. Do you really think she had no idea of my feelings? That she has not employed them for her own gain? Do you really think her innocent? I do not deny that she was used ill by the Boltons but I share none of their proclivities for bedding unwilling women. Your sister knows her own beauty, I am not immune to how she might use it against me.”

He said he shared none of the Bolton’s proclivities, but he had sold her to them. He had pursued her mother a great many years, and _ loved  _ her.

“How dare you suggest her some temptress when you have done nothing but attempt to destroy her virtue.”

“You think because she is sweet that she is without guile?” Baelish sneered, bored.

“You would have me believe that you fear her more than you actually do.”

“Your sister has power over me, she knows much about me that could destroy me, yet here I remain alive. She is not unvirtuous but she pretends more sweetness than she possesses. Is she  _ kind _ to you, Jon Snow? Does she speak gently? While we trust her so deeply she could more than like be planning to spirit away your crown and to kill  _ me _ for my crimes. She means to turn you against me and to charm your bannermen away from  _ you _ , do you think they will need you if  _ they _ can marry her and become King themselves in your stead? Aye, I desire her, that will not end but only a fool would not be wary of her.”

“What do you gain from all this?” Jon wondered, glaring up at this man he could not kill.

“Well, I still have  _ use _ of you. Sansa can be controlled but she is clever, should she do away with you it would be...dangerous for me. There would be nowhere for me to hide.”

_ These are lies, _ Jon’s fists twisted the cloak, his mouth twisting, desperate to break his neck. To make him stop talking - all of this was poison, all of it was  _ lies. _

Lord Baelish wanted Sansa as queen, he wanted to make a puppet of her.

Now he lied and said that he could not have her take Jon’s crown?

Jon’s brow twisted. “You think I would let you have her? Do you mean to ingratiate yourself and think I’d eventually have you as her husband?”

“I won’t press my suite at this time, it would be...tactless.” Petyr explains patient, amused. “It might shock you to know I’m a romantic, or it might not. Certainly there’s been song enough about my scars and your _brave_ Uncle Brandon. But I would not marry without her affection.”

Jon laughed in his face and bore his teeth. “You will _never_ marry her.”

“Perhaps I won’t,” Petyr mused, nonplussed, “though it begs Jon Snow to know that should should any such man who had contributed as much as I have to you in your time of greatest need...had any such man made such a proposal of marriage before a council of your lords, they would see it as his due. But I won’t.”

“How benevolent of you.”

“I only bring this tasteless topic up because you must know where you stand. You mean to protect your sister, you promise her this. I made a promise to her and you think me foul because I sold her to monsters, but _ you _ are your sister’s keeper now, her brother, you might have to sell her too. I do not think to flatter you by drawing parallels between us, Lord Snow. But I would remind you not to make promises you cannot keep.”

“You don’t love her, you would marry her to control her.”

“I would marry her because inspite of what she thinks of me, I still feel the same burn men do when they see those they desire. I love her and I have promised myself never to allow humiliation by love again. I would marry her because as much as you think me your enemy I am the only one who knows her, who can keep her from harming you. Perhaps she is not even as averse to the match as she pretends, perhaps she is. I know that you will never give her to me for you mistrust me, the match would threaten your position in a  _ number _ of ways, should she be _ my  _ creature and not your sister as you so  _ love _ to repeat. But I will not ask for her hand now, it would be folly at this point to presume. Besides, I mean to have her heart first. Jon Snow, your sister must have told you enough and my deeds speak for themselves so I will forgo the pretense for you, you cannot trust me, the  _ wisest _ thing you might do is to never trust me, but you  _ do _ need me, and for as long as we might, we will maintain a serviceable relationship, perhaps we might not even have to be enemies. Your sister is right. You think yourself capable of hiding your disdain and dislike of me? Few can, the very best live in the South, they have died there. Men who were better than you at much besides hiding their contempt. Your sister has been wise in telling you to cooperate but never trust me, it is what she would do too in your position, what we should all do with any we might rely on. But you are sorely mistaken if you believe you must never mistrust her in turn.”

“My sister does not want to be Queen, she wants to be safe, to be home – “

“I can see it in you, a memory of the time when being Queen was all she wanted,” Baelish said. “Once she was a sweet, silly girl, radiantly in love with Joffrey and the South. After that all she wanted was safety, now she has it. Ramsay’s dogs chew his bones and she still keeps his hounds because she sees their use, you think she will not seek further vindication? You think she wants safety alone? She will want her vengeance. Watch her and see what she will suggest when it comes to dealing with the South, will she want more blood for her vengeance or stone for the North’s fortification as you seem to think? When she came to the Wall, how quickly did she turn you to her cause?

“It is  _ our _ cause.”

“One does not live as long in the great game without knowing how to play, she is a survivor but she is also a player. She knew your brother would be dead eitherway, but she still rallied you enough with the hope that he would live so you could join her. She used him to get what she wanted knowing that she could not promise you he had any chances of living. She manipulated you.”

“…you’re a lying snake.” Jon shook his head.

“Who can disobey you because you are a bastard. Tell me, Jon Snow, has your sister offered to legitimize you? Or will you legitimize yourself?”

“Stay away from her.”

“Aye, that I might. Do you think I have to seek her out? You can keep me from her. By all means lock me away, have me trapped in some room, throw me in your cells if you are a fool. You can keep me from her,  Jon Snow, but can you keep her from me?”

Lies, he told himself again. Sansa promised not to need him.

Littlefinger still stared back at Jon with the calm of a far colder man than his courtly manner suggested, his mouth held at a twist, his smirk sly and assured. Sansa would never come to him.

Jon’s arms strained, Ramsay’s hounds stirred near. He had the dangerous thought of pulling Littlefinger’s arm through the bars to let them rip it from his body.

Littlefinger saw this flicker of madness and raised a brow.

I can’t, Jon cursed himself. He could not punish this man without facing all the damned consequences he couldn’t afford.

I am not her keeper.  _ I will never dare presume to be her keeper. _

“Aye,” Jon spoke finally, determined. “You are right about one thing, Lord Baelish.”

“I am right about a lot of things, Jon Snow.”

Jon shook his head, his smile as callous and sure. He neared to this man, he said low and into his ear, so there would be no mistake. “Ramsay died by his own hand. You think Sansa your creature because you spirited her away into the mountains, perhaps you have...coaxed her as you say. You taught my sister a great deal and yet you gave her to the Boltons,” Jon said sweet as all the poison in the world “Aye Lord Baelish, you did make a grievous error,” Jon promised, “and you will regret nothing more in your life.”

And with chest burning with all the trapped gales beyond the Wall, did Jon relinquish him, letting him fall to the ground. 

They were still howling a bloody song when he ripped himself away and turning, left before he might give into temptation and kill him.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i gave fair warning in the tags that as much as i need littlefinger to die in a torturous ugly way, that he is still an icon, i love his messy ass. doesn't mean i want him to get whatever he wants in the world, it means i love the drama and conflict he brings, i love his style, his sass, his whole schtick. he's a fascinating character. this fic is about character depth and complexity. so if you wanna log out because i didn't go the D & D way and make Littlefinger some stupid dude robbed of his slyness and outright cartoon villain then feel free to do so, don't let the door hit you on your way out. I don't want Littlefinger discourse in my comments. Liking Littlefigner doesn't mean you support his actions, you just appreciate what he brings to the table in drama, and love watching him work.
> 
> ANYWAY, Littlefinger is always gonna be THAT bitch.
> 
> (Also I hope Jon was more book!Jon - he only loses his temper coz 'death changed him', but i hope he's still the sass master GRRM wrote about at the wall - Jon 'I would love to see Ghost Juggle' Snow, Jon 'you looked bad before I ever met you' Snow - I HOPE I MANAGED THAT. I HOPE HE GOT HIS BLOWS IN TOO.)
> 
> Jon Snow too, is always gonna be THAT bitch as well.
> 
> Anyway, I've been excessive with my author notes so bye yall. share the fic with your friends, families, pets - your rivals and your community leaders. the more readers this fic gets the happier i am. and a happy writer = even speedier updates. I AM ON A ROLL.


	9. Chapter 9

" I eat your desire while it is still bloody  
& raw. "

 

 — [Portrait of a Modern Woman](http://www.glass-poetry.com/journal/2017/june/ang-portrait.html), _Ally Ang_

 

* * *

 

 

 

Ravens fly the very night Jon is made King, they soar over through the hale and snow, to every holdfast in the North from White Harbour to Moat Caitlin. More lords were set to arrive, brought by the news.

The news of a bastard King.

There were men in the trials Jon held that he was able to pardon and forgive, forced into fighting for the Boltons. Some would share kin with the arriving lords, their crimes only that they had been forced to fight lest they and their families be killed by their wardens. There were a few Locke boys and even a few surly Hornwood men who were all too happy to turn around and slay the Boltons once Won Won had crashed through Winterfell’s gates, signaling Ramsay’s loss.

Jon looked into their faces, hard and worn, muddied and bruised. Some of them were sorrier than others. These were soldiers who could be forgiven to be brought back to his family’s side. Only a fool would accuse him of having a soft heart when fighting men were few and far between. Only a fool would alienate penitent bannermen by killing more of their sons.

Some were sorrier than others. Some, despite their family names, Jon could not forgive. He had been a man of the Night’s Watch, his brothers had been rapists, killers, the foul of heart or kind. He knew too well the difference from men frightened and forced, and men who had taken war as an opportunity to unleash their vile appetites upon the world.

At the trials witnesses came forward, demanding justice for fouler crimes, rape and murder, done with malice and glee. Those accused, Jon could not forgive. He watched these proceedings grimly and ruled over them with Ser Davos by his side, and before he had banished her, Melisendre.

When the lords began to arrive, Jon refused to have them in the room as he continued these trials. They would be a dangerous interference he could not afford, incapable of being impartial.

Had Ramsay still been alive nothing would have stayed the great families of the North from howling for a performance, all would have wanted a hand in this justice, and Ramsay would have turned them all on one another with a few clever words.

For his own peace of mind and the peace of the land, Jon would leave the rulings of justice over crimes, great or petty, in no one’s hands but his own.

The trials were infinitely harder now as the lords began arriving in droves, all wanting to witness justice. _They will only think it justice if it suits them,_ Jon thought darkly and told Ser Davos as much. Firmly did he dismiss lords who sought pitifully to bully him into being allowed within. _Neither can I risk their influence for they will also want to protect their own men, regardless of their innocence. They will only complicate the process and delay it, they will be an interference._

Jon could only appease the lords by allowing them to view the executions.

The men sentenced to die already knelt in the yard, most of them Boltons and minor sons of Umbers and Karstarks. The heirs of the house of Bolton dead, none would defend them or vow vengeance against their executors.

Jon had made his rulings clear, if there still remained women on Bolton lands then they were to discard their husbands names and return to their father’s homes with any of the children from these marriages. He decreed that unmarried Bolton maidens would take the names of their non-Bolton mothers or to take the name Snow.  _Return to your family holdfasts and take your fathers names again, give them to your children or give them the names of bastards, the names of the North._

Better a bastard than a Bolton.

The Dreadfort would be emptied, any who remained within when the North returned to retake it would be considered interlopers and be dealt with. The Boltons were ashes thrown to the wind and no one would seek vengeance on behalf of these criminals.

They would be no more.

He had not known rest and Littlefinger saw it, waiting for Jon at dawn.

“Lord Baelish. I expected you to be in the yard, waiting with the Valemen.”

“Yohn Royce holds vigil in my place.” Littlefinger declared, looking fresh as ever, despite the hour, accompanying him on his march through the corridors of Winterfell.

“Then perhaps you should be resting.”

“Don’t coddle me so, Jon Snow.” Littlefinger’s smile mocked, victorious and Jon knew he would not be rid of him until he had spoken his piece. “I’ve had my share of slothish sovereigns, I never expected that when I did have the honour of being in the employ of one who ruled intently that he would look quite so dead on his feet.”

Ser Davos hung back a little but Jon imagined the wrinkling of his brow.

Littlefinger managed both praise and insult at once, a skill Jon was fast becoming weary of. Since Jon had threatened him with violence Littlefinger had only seemed to grow more confident, sure of his position and necessity.

It certainly did not help matters now that Littlefinger’s caravans were the ones keeping Winterfell well supplied in these dark times, with all of the North’s arrival straining the fort’s stores.

 _It will not be a strain for long,_ Jon knew. With the Vale armies surrounding, the Northern houses who had already sworn themselves to their new King would go back to their own lands to gather and prepare their armies, ready for anything that should be required of them.

Once these executions were over Jon would rest easier, or as easy as he might knowing all the he knew.

Jon forced himself to draw upon the stores of civility Littlefinger had been sucking dry. “Killing wearies, my lord.”

“Is that all that wearies you, my King? Should you wish to unburden yourself, I have been an advisor to many.”

“If I should need your...counsel,” Jon managed admirably. “I shall seek it.”

“Ah, yes. You do have the Onion Knight,” Littlefinger said as they neared the doors leading out. “Ser Davos must be indispensable. And of course, there is always your sister, the Lady Sansa who I’m sure knows all your troubles.”

Jon tried not to walk faster, tried not to let his expression shift.

Littlefinger knew everything, he’d been told.

But in the unlikely event that he did not, Jon would not give himself up. He had been discreet as possible with his movements, hiding his plans even from Sansa. Only Ser Davos and Tormund knew, their involvement vital, each were sworn to secrecy.

“You will find my sister and I are both busy with the restoration of her House,” Jon informed the Southron lord. “She with the keep, and I with killing.”

Littlefinger laughed. “They see your lord father in you, these men. Do you know what I see?”

“I don’t care what you see, Southerner, but that’s never stopped you before.”

“When you stand in the yard and swing your sword there is a trick of the light, but it is only a trick of the light.” Littlefinger said indulgently. “You have the shape of Eddard Stark but I see on you another shadow, Jon Snow. Bastard-blood and wolf’s, hot-headed and angry. It eclipsed your father as only a brother can, just as king Robb Stark eclipsed you. Do you know who I see?”

The doors opened, they were even less alone, in view of soldiers and the Northeners waiting for him.

"Your fool uncle." Littlefinger smirked, whispering slyly. “Brash and lusty, Brandon Stark.”

Jon looked at him, unseeing, not understanding but mistrusting either way. His suspiciousness like a cloud around him, shielding him from Littlefinger’s jibes and yet warbling up Littlefinger’s motives, making them dangerous but still, ever unclear.

Littlefinger bowed his head and murmured his leave, seeping away into the castle. Even the slowness with which he walked was mocking, done as if as a courtesy to whoever Jon had attached to following him around to spy on him. Littlefinger knew he was being followed, just as Sansa had known she was being followed before.

They were one and the same, master and student, shadows of one another, shaped beneath clever hands.

But Jon chose. Choosing uneasily to trust his sister into heeding his order not to be alone with Littlefinger, Jon turned back onto course.

Jon went out into the snow, in full view of the lords, and seperated heads from bodies.

Ser Davos had suggested a headsman, but Jon had refused. It was not the Northern way, and if he needed to make these men believe he could lead them he had to do things as his father would have done, the right way.

The holdfast wall where this would usually be done was crowded with the camp, so Jon, with sorrow, reemployed the yard to these means.

Longclaw was light in his hands, Jon looked grimly at the lords collected. Cley Cerwyn watched from the balcony leaned against the railing, his chin turned into the collar of his cloak, the posture sullen, but his eyes determined.

Lord Glover and Ser Davos stood behind Jon, bearing witness.

The dungeons did not have the capacity required to let the guilty languish for an indeterminate time. Those who could be forgiven, quickly were. Those who could not? Were either made hostages if they had value as such, or dead.

Following his Kinging, Jon’s days began even earlier than dawn. The trials were over, and now, from sun up to sun down, the King in the North stood in the snow, swinging his sword.

His heart was grey, but his work was sure.

He hardly saw his sister, he hardly went to the rooms she had ordered him to keep. He slept only when necessary and never in her lady-mother’s bed. He would enter the rooms to wash and to create the impression that he inhabited it, for the sake of peace, but between his kingly duties and his contending with the lords, Jon could only go to the godswood, sharpen his bastard-blade, and resting it over his knees, close his eyes for moments at a time. He only slept enough to keep himself alive.

Daylight begins to fail when Jon feels new eyes on the back of his neck.

The yard is emptier, some of the lords have departed, others have taken up in their absence…Ser Davos and Lord Glover have gone in Jon’s stead to welcome the new lords who come and see off those who leave, and attend to other duties.

He has refused a squire so Glover has left his own, to assist knowing Jon will not ask for assistance, perhaps hoping that in time Jon will see the use of one and allot himself a squire from one of the Northern houses, honouring them.

Jon has had his fill of squires, it will take a greater force than one of his bannermen’s will to compel Jon to take one again.

Lord Cley has left the yard, looking wearier than when he had arrived.

It is a hard thing to witness death all day, even for men who have been hardened by it. Jon’s heart feels like the pit of some bruised fruit, blackened, lined. Sweat runs down his back, turning icy. There is blood splattered on his arms and chest, and by the iron tang of it, in his mouth and beard too.

He has grown deaf to pleas for mercy, he has become a butcher, not a King. Hacking away at heads in procession. He is growing mad, for how little he sees. A veil drawn over his eyes and ears.

Jon swings back, quickly correcting his half-stumble of exhaustion. He does not stop because he is weary, but because his father took off heads with one swing, a task  requiring strength and preciseness. Jon’s strength is flagging from lack of sleep, his body with its aches. His throat is parched as all the sands in Dorne and he feels...brittle now, impatient with the sight of eyes, with the itch on his neck, attention poised along his shoulders like the shadow of bared steel. He will not hack thrice to take off a man's head because he is too tired and proud as to rest, a man's head should be taken with one swing.

Jon sheathes longclaw as a squire scurries to bring him water. He swipes his wrist across his rusty mouth, turning heavily. His body burns hot despite the chill and beneath his jerkin he feels as sweltered as the inside of a great clay oven. On the balcony above he saw his sister standing where Cley Cerwyn had been not long ago.

How long she had been standing there Jon could pretend not to know, but he knew it would be a lie. It had been her gaze on his shoulders, he’d felt it.

His sister is mid-task, stopping on her way between errands. A maid waits behind her, momentarily ignored. Jon’s heart begins to thump, pounding in the base of his throat like a gavel to the block.

His mouth is parched as scorched earth and his body drinks of her presence like the target watching the archer drawing his bow, the light fur on her shoulders, the cold has kissed her cheeks and nose pink, she would deny it, claim it a trick of the wind. His sister liked to pretend that all the girlishness was lost from her.

Jon felt beastly and weary, breath choppy and chest rising fast from his exertions, stray hair plastered against his temples, damp from sweat...

“Your grace,” and Jon glanced at the squire, a dark-haired, dark-eyed boy with the stubborn look Jon recognized, as like recognized like, as a creature must recognise his own; for he had the look of a bastard, determined and stubborn, holding out to his king a skein.

Jon nodded his thanks and took it, raising it to his mouth. He drank, it was water, not wine, and all the sweeter for it. Half-melted like snow. It passed his lips and froze at his throat, each swallow like a hard knife.

He could not smile at Sansa, for he would be a queer man indeed to grin so during such bloody proceedings. He could not muster up warmth as pretense either, his body ran hot and cold, a fever of killing in a deathless man - at extremes, there was a fine dusting of snow on his shoulders, melting against the heat of his skin.

The water did not quench him, just as sleep would not rest him, just as sadness could not stay him from doing what must be done. Since the betrayal he suffered at the hands of his sworn brothers, Jon’s comforts were temporary, his urges either base in their irrationality and strength, or absent in their feeling, animal in their indifference and their emptiness

Her lady-mother had stood there once, watching his lord-father walk the yard as he returned from killing of his own. Her eyes would glance over Jon as they would the cold and empty air, and lord Stark would go to the old gods, to mull under the red leaves as they floated down to touch the black pool.

But sometimes he did not go, sometimes he would split from his party of men and take the stairs and go to her, not two at a time like an eager green boy, but determined and sure enough so no man mistook his march as a time to invite themselves to his attention.

Lord and lady Stark would disappear, and Jon might have once felt grown his ears burn to remember it, as though to do so was to make it crass. But he was a grown man and a King besides, looking only upon his sister as they both did what they thought was best to restore the Stark legacy.

Nothing put a man’s blood up more than killing and death, even one as grim and noble as lord Stark who took no joy in it.

Jon Snow took no joy in it. He had executed the men who had mutinied at the Wall, avenging himself - and he had taken no joy in it, he had known it to be just and to be necessary, and sometimes he felt a dark grimness that neared satisfaction, bitter and true, but he did not dare call it joy.

Today he slew those same mutineers a hundred times over, relived his own botched death a hundred times over until they were all dead. How many times could a man avenge himself before it was called slaughter and conquest?

 _I do this for our family_ , Jon thought she knew, her eyes never breaking from his, not even once he had drained the skein dry. It was not himself that he now avenged, and he was lord Stark just as little as she was her lady mother. Lady Catelyn would have held a hatred like frost in her eyes, looking upon Jon Snow.

But on Sansa he only saw now his own certainty reflected back, his own convictions. What he would do for their family, she was the only living remaining to him - there would still be more dead to make.

More dead would come, over the wall and through the wolfswood, through the North gate and the East, wights and Southerners. Soldiers and the others. A long night was falling, Winter had arrived, a pale, tall steed, a force greater than any battle he had fought before.

Sansa’s face was a mask of tranquility and strength, as murky as the black pool, as hidden in depth. He had been caught killing by her before, mad and tearing into Ramsay. He had swayed away knowing it was not his place to take this kill, the logic in him then a wolf’s.

Now he stood in control, swiping at his mouth with the back of his hand and drawing his sword again and she stood in witness, not before the steps of the sept, not on the ground as he tackled Ramsay, but above, queenly and cold. He inclined his head quietly and quickly returned to his task.

He felt her leave sometime later, Jon had lost count of how many he had killed and turned his head to ask, too exhausted to care about alarming the squire - only to see Ser Davos rushing across the grounds, parchment clutched in his hands, his mouth tucked and his brow pinched.

Jon slowed to a halt, only to march forward, meeting the man halfway and taking his arm. His heart dropped, dread curdling in his gut. He saw a maester following the onion knight, looking harried that the old man cared not for abandoning him, but Jon did not care for maester Wolkan who would scarce meet his eyes for fear.

“What has happened?” Jon demanded, back turned to hide his face from any witnesses that still remained, Ser Davos was never so open with his alarm, his stern eyes betraying everything as he neared.

“There is news,” Ser Davos confessed, frowning over the missive he had puzzled with difficulty. “A raven from the South.”

Jon’s stomach dropped. It was a small relief that Ser Davos had not said that his plans were now known, but the dread did not lift.

“The Great Sept of Baelor has fallen to wildfire, the Faith Militant overturned. King Tommen is dead.”

Jon listened, stricken. Much rushed through his mind, toppling, all of them disastrous, but he whispered, quietly. “ _Wildfire_.”

“Cersei Lannister has untold supplies of it and if rumour be true, she has maesters who know the secrets of the pyromancers from the Alchemists guild,” it was maester Wolkan who spoke now, eyes never lifting from the floor, the bloodied earth. He swallowed hard. “She is freed and has appointed herself the Queen, she now sits the iron throne.”

“Was she not standing trial for her crimes?”

Maester Wolkan bowed his head as though shamed.

 _What are you ashamed of, you old fool._   Jon stared up at the darkening sky, shaking his head, the laugh that left him was shallow, disbelieving, and soft and quiet as his despair.

_And now our most bitter enemy has risen._

She has crowned herself Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm....

Jon sheathed his sword and called for a pause to killing, the news did not terrify him so much as remind him of yet another threat he would need to account for. She would hear it from him, he decided darkly, before he would let her hear it from anyone else.

He only stopped by the stables to wash the blood from his beard before he went in search of his sister to give her news of their enemies. 

* * *

 

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

 

 

 

I have loved stones. Ungratefully sharp pebbles  
lodged in the soft meat between my toes.  
A woman grows accustomed to losing things,  
but the earth is full of stones.

 

 **— Eseohe Arhebamen,**   _Iye Oshodi_

 

* * *

 

 

In one of the old rooms where they had moved the Bolton chests, Sansa sat on the a small stool, her back to the vanity. When Jon came in the maid excused herself with her her arms full of fabric, affording them some privacy.

There were chests all around his sister’s feet and on the vanity, there were jewels in her lap, fine golden thread trickled through her fingers and into her palm. She lifted her head, greeting him with a small smile. “I suppose I should be thankful to lady Walda, she wasn’t as daft as some thought.”

He dreaded breaking the idyllic calm he had found her in. She looked like the lady of a keep, attending to dusty things and putting them in order, working in peaceful quiet and he was an interloper come to unkindly put things in disorder.

It was not often he saw Sansa happy, but he knew she felt safe by her calm, devoting herself to these tasks with her gentle, highborn hands and putting to use her education in such things.

He was the shadow before her door, soiled from terrible deeds. An encroaching stain.

The smile leached from her face as she took notice of the parchment in his hand.

Jon came quietly toward her, she watched his approach with wary dread and waited as he seated himself on the dusty bed. He tried to come up with a way to speak to her, but he had to find his words.

When she reached out to put her hand on his where it was clutched over his knee, he had to tell himself not to laugh bitterly. This show of concern, she thought him troubled when he was the one who had come to trouble her.

He refused to think more of it and took her in hand, thumb resting over her knuckles. “Cersei Lannister has made herself queen.”

She frowned, not at his touch, but at his words. Jon explained to her, or to her hands, really - and when he was done, she looked at him unseeingly, as though she had not understood.

“If Olenna Tyrell was not in the sept then she will fight Cersei…” Sansa finally said. "And if we have heard of Cersei, then she will have heard of us..."

The words were of sense and yet she sounded far away. He felt her swallow and looked at her with concern. “We’ll be prepared.”

Jon traced circles on the back of her hand, her skin smooth beneath his touch.

He had rubbed the dirt from his hands best as he could, but it was no good. “The South won’t come, if her military advisors have any sense they’ll ask her to wait until Winter’s over.”

 _Winter might outlive us all if we are not careful._ He sensed that Sansa had withdrawn into herself, he stroked her knuckles gently, seeking to anchor them both to the present.

Cersei would be risking too much trying to march her men here, they had never fought in the North, they were too far, it was too cold. Moat Caitlin still protected the causeway, they would choke the South off in the marshes.

No...If the South were to come it would be through White Harbour, held by the Manderlys.

Lord Too Fat to Ride a Horse, he’d heard lord Manderly be called. Not too fat to send a raven, was he? But nothing but silence had come from them.

They needed the fealty of the Manderlys now more than ever. If an attack from the South came, Jon needed the Manderlys to hold.

If the North survived the great war with the Others, Cersei would be there in the Summer, ready to vulture.

“Yes,” Sansa said. “Olenna Tyrell...she’ll want revenge. She’ll fight Cersei with all of Highgarden’s resources...”

Sansa hesitated and went quiet.

She decided, taking both his hands, stilling them from their tender comfort. “It’s no matter.”

The news had upset Sansa but beyond the reasons he expected. The news of their family’s greatest enemy sitting the iron throne could bring her no comfort, he suspected something else had also made her melancholy. Should he press her for more? Would it end badly? Would he do more harm than good?

He saw familiar jewels wound around the fingers of her hand, gold and fine as spiderweb against his wrist. He had the urge to trace the stone, but did not dare, the forbidding feeling familiar to him. “These are your mother’s things.”

Sansa blinked, letting go of him. She smiled a curious smile, as though to pretend they had not spoken of all the unpleasantness they had.

“Lady Walda kept them very well. Likely Roose Bolton’s doing rather than his son’s, wanting the Lady Bolton to have all that befitted the Lady of Winterfell, he probably gifted them to her after the sacking.”

“They’re...pretty,” he said weakly. It was foolish for him to dread that she should wear them, there were similarities between Sansa and her mother, some he would rather she did not emphasize. When he saw lady Catelyn’s things he remembered being a child tottering toward her, wanting to touch the hem of her dress, her face, and never being allowed.

“I hope some fine lady will think so.”

He frowned.

“Surviving winter means coin, Jon, not jeweled baubles.”

“They were your mother’s.”

“And Lady Walda kept them well.” Sansa said, “It wouldn’t be appropriate to outfit myself in finery in times where our people struggle.”

He could not fault her sense, but Sansa was the lady of Winterfell, and this and that and so much else was her inheritance. A fine lady who might one day have a future if he could win it for her, she should still have her mother’s things. “And after the war...Sansa?”

This time when she smiled, it was so sweet as to make his stomach flip, “This is the first I hear you thinking of a world after the war.”

He looked at their hands, he shifted out of her grip on his wrists and covered her knuckles again. “You cannot sell these things.”

“It’s foolish not to sell them, our people need the coin.”

“Things are not yet so dire as that, I won’t let them be.”

“I won’t get a fair price for them if buyers know we are desperate, and when things are dire we will be very desperate indeed.”

“You’re upset. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m not.”

“Sansa,” he began firmly.

“I have a little headache,” she said, “That’s all.”

“You haven’t been sleeping well?”

“I’m sleeping much better than I ever expected to have. You?”

“I’m the same,” he cracked a small grin.

“Don’t lie, Jon. You look like you haven’t slept in days. What troubles you?”

“Nothing,” he lied, shaking his head. “I’m fine.”

“You haven’t heard from the lords?”

“I’ve heard from everyone except Manderly, Reed, Karstark and Umber.”

She nodded solemnly. “You’re worried.”

“I’m concerned.”

“Will you send scouts?”

“And have them returned to me headless? No, I shall wait a little.”

* * *

 

 

Jon did not care for Maester Wolkan at all, but his sister strangely did not seem to bear the man who had served her beastly husband's family any particular ill will. The majority of Littlefinger's creatures now stayed in Wintertown, and Jon would see them soon removed as well - Jon liked even less the idea of them attending to his sister. Wolkan would do.

He did not believe that a headache was all the bothered Sansa, she was troubled - he did not know why beyond the obvious reasons and she would not tell him. Jon returned to his duties quickly enough, keeping himself distracted before his frustration could get the better of him.

"We need the support of the Manderlys now more than ever," he told Ser Davos in one of the solars in which they held these meetings.

"You believe Moat Caitlin impenetrable?"

"No," It was after all, under siege for the better part of the war. "but I know House Reed will take care of any southerners that make it into the Marshes. I know that the Umbers no longer have their men stationed there. If there is to be an attack from the South, they will come from the sea, from White Harbour."

"You haven't heard from the Reed's either, Jon."

"I don't have to. The crannogmen rarely leave the Marshes, they keep to themselves and they act in the best interests of the North. Howland Reed was my father's close friend, they fought together. If it weren't for them, the South would have already marched on us."

"Forgive me but you Northerners still take getting used to."

Tormund harrumped, raising his brows sarcastically as he drank deep of his cup.

Jon ignored his critical scowl at the taste of the wine. "If you can't yet understand then trust me. It isn't the Reeds who worry me, it is the Umbers and the Karstarks."

"They have more to lose than gain in joining forces against you once more."

It was only the three of them in the solar but Jon still shot him a warning look.

"The Umbers will be reasoned with."

"The Umbers are proud and vicious."

"But you will forgive them, won't you?"

"I promised it. If they allow me to, if they make themselves peaceable and swear to fight for the North."

"You sound doubtful."

"They hate wildlings," Tormund announced loftily, smacking his cup back onto the tables. "Wildlings don't like them no better either. They gave up your little brother because they hated us so much. They hate you too, King Snow."

Jon clenched his jaw.

"You don't really want to be forgiving, do you? Your sword said enough about forgiveness today and they'll be a lot of things, once they find out what we hold and what we mean to do. But peaceable they will not make themselves."


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, please let me know what you think of the story!

I felt  
like a god, or at least a woman  
one might love  
into suffering.

I fix myself  
in that stare. As if I were, as you saw me  
once, vital —

a being worth  
of worship, terror.

 

—  [Dressing Before a Mirror in Morning](https://www.amazon.com/New-Generation-African-Poets-Chapbook-Poetry/dp/1617756237/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=sl1&tag=lifeinpoetry-p-20&linkId=7ad617bc92ac7a774a0edeea2b81b76b) **,** _Leila Chatti_

* * *

 

 

 

_If we have heard of her, then she has heard of us._

 

She saw Jon next during a meeting with the lords in one of the solars he’d set aside for these matters. Littlefinger offered all his aid, she expected Jon to be more incensed but was surprised to see him begrudgingly accept for the timebeing.

 

“It is only fair that your guests don’t prove a burden to you,” Petyr said humbly, which had the Northern lords who remained and who weren’t all too fond of him, murmur amongst themselves. Seeing the sense of it as well.

 

Sansa wished these meetings didn’t involve so many people, better announcements be made in public and then details discussed and negotiated in private, with a defter hand than this.

 

But Jon was a man of the Night’s Watch, all their meets had been in the mess hall, all men had a say. For now, this kind of willingness to hear all advice would endear him but was it sustainable?

 

Jon had inclined his head with surly acceptance. “That won’t long be necessary.”

 

Whether Jon meant to accept grain or throw his guests out eventually, Sansa had difficulty telling. His face at times was far more guarded than even father’s had been.

 

Littlefinger smiled and paid her no attention, it was even worse than she thought.

 

By now every man in the North knew of Cersei’s rise to power, her brother hadn’t been as discrete as he’d thought when he’d received the raven, and Littlefinger saw everything anyway.

 

There was a new energy amongst the lords this morning, a kind of buzzing, like the murmur of wasps.

 

“It won’t be necessary,” Sansa tensed at the voice of one of the Flint men. “we mean to go South, don’t we?”

 

Agreement ebbed throughout the hall.

 

Jon’s face was cold and fixed. “The North is in disarray, the South will have to wait.”

 

Jon, she wanted to hiss, at least try to appease them!

 

There were grunts and noises of disapproval, a few yells even. They wanted blood in the South, Frey and Lannister. They wanted vengeance and answer. The Freys and the Lannisters had already taken back the Riverlands, to win it back now would be costly. But their sense of justice knew no patience.

 

Littlefinger’s silence was telling to her, letting the hall argue with itself.

 

Jon rose, fearsome in the furs that seemed to broaden his shoulders and throw his shadow large against the wall behind them. “We don’t have the grain, we don’t have the men to fight both wars. Lannister armies will not come North if they’ve got any sense, not until Spring. There wont’ be a Spring if the threat beyond the wall isn’t defeated.”

 

“And if we survive? The Lannisters will come for us anyway, they’ll kill us when we’re weak! What will we have saved then? Are we to leave your brother’s allies defenseless?”

 

Anger struck her, to hear them refer to Robb so. But trepidation as well. She had Tully blood, if anything she’d be expected to have some say, or sway in these proceedings, but she did not dare speak. Better she gather her thoughts and see what was to be done in the shadows.

 

She glanced at Littlefinger instinctively, as she’d so often done when she’d learned by his knee, this time his eyes were on hers, the cloudy grey green of old stones.

 

Her mother’s family had suffered for Robb, the Blackfish dead, Edmure a hostage…

 

Family, duty, honour…

 

 _Jon is my closest kin_ , the concern here more immediate. But just as much would be read in what she did not say, as what she did say. She looked away to see that Jon didn’t have an immediate answer to that, his jaw hard. “If we unite the North, Umber, Karstark, _wildling_ – ” some lordly protests went up in fury, and Jon’s voice rose with warning. “Then we can defend our borders when the time comes. But Winter protects our backs in the South, and comes for us in the North – when the time comes, we will be ready.”

 

Then he dismissed them. They grumbled but they would relent, Sansa rose too as she saw Ser Davos approach, she was already making plans on how to assuage bruised egos, which men to approach and keep in check. Jon finally looked to her, pulling her out of her thoughts. “Are you feeling better? You should rest.”

 

He did not invite her to listen to what would occur privately, she noted. She bit her lip, making the decision to allow it without challenge. Better what she did be hidden from him as well. She’d not been steady since the news about Cersei, her heart heavy in a way it hadn’t been in a long time. She told him she was well and went to attend to her own duties, the doors were barred behind her, two burly wildlings stood, guarding them.

 

How much she did not know worried her. What she had seen during the meeting had seemed all ingredients for future trouble. The Hornwood estate had been brought up once more, Lord Glover’s squire was wisely out of the room, Jon had refused to discuss the matter.

 

When she’d visited the maester’s earlier she learnt there was a letter from the Manderlys. Jon and she hadn’t seen each other since the evening before, he probably hadn’t the time to bring it up, but it was an itch. What had happened? He seemed in a grimmer mood than ever, her brother, arriving at the hall with dark shadows under his eyes, he came and went, she did not know where.

 

Littlefinger would know, about everything that went on in Winterfell and more besides. Compared to Jon, he seemed as fresh and well-rested as a man who had never missed a wink of sleep in his life, even when she knew for certain that he worked well into the night, with dangerous troubles of his own. Always a game at play, always a risk, a move…

 

She walked to the old glass gardens nearly unseen in the commotion of lords coming and leaving, now thankfully, leaving. Jon had asked them to go to their homes and ready themselves there to heed his commands, be it for returning to Winterfell for safety, or going to war.

 

The snow was light and powdery beneath her boots, she almost didn’t hear the crunch of footsteps behind her. When she did, she whipped around so fast she nearly stumbled. Littlefinger? Her heart raced.

 

No, not he.

 

A familiar face, handsome and notoriously vain, he’d been called. But here in Winterfell there was snow scattered over a cloak finer than she’d ever seen him in. It was Myrance Royce who’d been audacious enough to exchange barbs with him, and Mya stone who’d been in love with his squire and suspicious of him. Slender than a starving fox, she’d say, and far too quick to be trusted.

 

Her expression was polite, at the corner of Sansa’s eye a shadow dissapeared back behind the stones.

 

“Alayne,” Lyn Corbray said in a pleased murmur that had her skin crawling. “now Lady Sansa Stark, a princess.”

 

“My lord,” Sansa said, pleasant and courteous. “I didn’t think you’d have come all the way North with lord Baelish.”

 

“Even with a hood on my eyes knew you. Are you glad to see me?”

 

 _Vain?_ Littlefinger had smirked, aware of his own sleek, rich wardrobe. A man who always looked like he had coin. _Lord Lyn is a simple man, his services are rewarded easily. Gold, boys, and promises._

 

Sansa knew better than to let the chill of that memory touch her eyes, her mouth bent. “We had happy days at the Vale.”

 

“You will have happy days here too,” Lyn Corbray returned just as mysteriously, just as knowingly.

 

When he extended his arm she did not allow herself to pause, she took it as though it were nothing. He had not been unkind to her at the Vale, he’d treated her as familiarly and somewhat indifferently at once, as a man might treat a nobleman’s bastard. He’d never groped at her, which had little to do with his having any decency of his own.

 

Nestor Royce had called him a dangerous man.

 

They walked arm in arm around the remains and ruined skeleton of the old gardens, as courtly as if he were the very Knight of Flowers. Sansa was carefully tranquil despite her unease, he asked her about the gardens, she told him about the worst of the damage and how she might think to rectify such a thing. Glass from Dorne, masons from Wintertown...things it would not harm her to speak about, nothing she gave away that could be used against them.

 

“Dorne...how will you manage such a thing?” he asked innocently.

 

“I will,” she said, and smile slightly as though she were giving him cheek and not sidestepping inquiries. “You’ll see.”

 

“I can’t imagine the taciturn King Snow caring about glass.” he mused.

 

Sansa shrugged daintily and held his arm closer, leaning on him so he might feel needed like a man. “My brother is a man of sense and necessity, he cares about Winterfell’s stores just as much as I do. Any King would.”

 

“Historically, not any King, Lady Sansa.”

 

He helped her over a rib of broken tinder.

 

“...you looked Queenly there, next to him.”

 

She gave a shy girlish laugh, a half-formed, borrowed ghost of a Tyrell girl she’d once known. More convincing than she’d ever been in her youth. “You’re full of compliments, my lord.” she said softly, though internally she seethed. “is there something you want?”

 

“I’m a simple man.”

 

He didn’t desire her, but that had not kept him from asking for Lady Lysa’s hand, mad and fat as she’d been. There was power and hunger in him, lean as a knife.

 

Sansa took a different track. “Tell me about Myranda, about Mya.”

 

“You might be seeing your plump friend soon.”

 

“I hardly think she would travel quite so far just to visit me, it would be too dangerous.”

 

“People have traveled further for weddings, haven’t they?”

 

Sansa halted.

 

Speechless she stood, he let her arm slip out of his. “What do you mean?”

 

“Has not you lord-father told you of his grand plans?”

 

“My lord-father...” Sansa’s voice trailed off. Then she gathered herself, the girlish act had fallen away, and in its place stood the calm, icy interior, the Lady of Winterfell. He approved of the change. “Lord Baelish and I have yet to speak.”

 

“Yes, I could tell that. As close as two tangling snakes the two of you were, in the Vale there were the sauciest rumours...”

 

She refused panick, she refused fear. She stared back at him, a stone. “You come to me as his creature?”

 

“You are more his creature than I am,” he said with mocking regret. “But no, he has not sent me, and that alarms me. I come only as a dog mindful of where his supper comes from, and a dog notices things. I’m only intrigued, and because of our _friendship_ I would advise that whatever distance you have allowed to spring up between you, that you close it. It is dangerous not to know what he knows, we both are aware of this are we not?”

 

“We are not friends, my lord.”

 

“Let’s not be hasty, Alayne. Plans and plans and going ons going on, doesn’t it alarm you? Lord Baelish and your bastard half-brother both. King Snow invited Littlefinger to the meeting, did you know that? He did not simply materialize. I thought I had your brother all wrong.”

 

She did not give anything away, but he saw it nonetheless.

 

“They’ve been speaking the two of them, can you imagine? And Lord Snow does many things in secret, I have seen him go into the dungeons. Cells locked and barred from eyes outside of his close circle. Do you not know? Who does he keep there?”

 

Sansa’s anger was like slur in her blood, silty and vile as a river in the wake of a flood. She wondered if it were better to control herself or to let him see her riled, she tried to control her breathing, her eyes, how she looked, but he saw. He wanted to see a hurt girl, jealous and angry. He wanted to stir her up. _Should I oblige?_

 

“You are shadowed by wildling bitches. Your brother is a man with secrets. And here, here his man comes!”

 

Sansa followed his gaze, heart racing with anger and struggling to keep her composure. Lord Glover’s squire came, he came carefully as though he had interrupted some conspiracy or tryst. He was tall and handsome, and lean in a way she recognised, that did not frighten the way Lyn Corbray did.

 

“What is it bastard?”

 

“Pardon me m’lady,” he ignored the Vale man with elegant ease, speaking directly to Sansa’s feet.

 

“Larence,” she said a great deal more kindly than Lyn Corbray had bothered. “What is it?”

 

“The King has need of you. At the godswood.” he said, then lazily raised his eyes to look the other man’s way, brazenly bored. “Alone.”

 

It was nearly rude, but Sansa didn’t care much for the feelings of her guest. But she cared for Lord Glover's man's safety, gold, boys, promises...Lyn Corbray liked them young, she'd heard it said of him, it filled her with unease. Larence was not a weak child but Lyn Corbray was a strong, vicious man - dangerous and disposed towards pretty boys. She saw the covetous way he looked at this boy, the way he spoke of Jon too, as a man might speak of a pretty maid, as Ramsay had spoken of the girls he had hunted in the Wolfswood.

 

“Let me not keep you,” he called to her, but Sansa was already striding, already at the old broken gate before he’d even finished speaking.

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

 

 

 

 

 

I want to be soft and what

is softer than the sky  
before it breaks?

 

 **—[when I transition will I lose my taste for the storm?](http://pittsburghpoetryreview.com/featured-poetry/kayleb-rae-candrilli.html),**   _Kayleb Rae Candrilli_

# 

 

* * *

 

 

A year ago her hair had been dark from mudroot, a deep, dark brown - near black - to make her eyes jewels in a face of white marble.

Jon had such pretty hair. Curls shining lush as satin, dark as rain gleaming on a wet black crow. He ties it back like father had. There was a swooping at the bottom of her ribs like a scythe scraping away the flesh from a fruit. It emptied her and then all at once, the cold, sweet air rushed in, and she was stillness again.

He’d been sharpening his blade, when he looked up there was a softening in his eyes before he quickly stopped his task and put away his killing things; there’s guilt in him then. Whether it’s because he knows how he looks, or because he wants to hide these crass, bloodying things from her, or because he feels it is not his place to sit where their lord-father has sat, Sansa didn't quite know. Maybe it’s all of it.

She’d rushed here but there’s no urgency in her anymore, strangely. Sansa steadies herself so as not to worry him and creeps across the snow toward him. When she sits next to him he seems surprised but not unwelcoming, a little uncomfortable maybe. Where is the man who had taken her hand only last night? He looks away from her and speaks lightly to the ground. “Have I taken you from something?”

She doesn’t sense any underlying reproach, only Jon being Jon, and Lyn Corbray’s ugly words, if they’d ever even had a chance to take root in her, they melt away.

Jon tentatively gathers snow into his hands, packing at it, to give himself something to do. Sometimes she thinks there’s ease between them, and other times Jon retreats shyly into himself only for her to have to coax him out with kindness and reassurance. With other men failing had meant dire consequences, but with Jon she finds she isn’t afraid like she was then.

She does as he does, fingers tickling at the snow near her feet and patting it towards him. His grin is crooked and warm, accepting her share to add to his. “When was the last time you built a snow castle?” Sansa teases him. “Do you even remember?”

“I can’t,” he admits, shaking his head. “I don’t think I know how.”

“You boys kept stomping about and Arya would try, but she never had the patience. She wanted to lie down in it or run it over.” Sansa smiles, the memory sweet, Jon lifts his handful of snow and Sansa packs her own ontop of his. White dust dislodges, trickling away from his fingers where it cannot hold.

“Aren’t you going to tell me that it’s not becoming of a King?”

“Would you like me to?” she asks, she is more curious than offended.

He turns away his eyes again, his words mumbled and shy. His nose is red from the cold, she must look a fright as well. “It doesn’t always seem like it, but I...appreciate your counsel.”

“When I tell you what to do?” she teased, “I’m not undermining you?”

“You’ve a right to say what you want.”

She finds herself beaming at him. “Thank you, Jon.”

He sighs, sonorous and Sansa finds herself feeling dread once more. She extends her hands and surprise makes him clumsy, passing the pile of snow to her. It crumples in her arms and spills into her lap, he grimaces at the mess but Sansa doesn’t pay that any mind, she’s busy watching Jon as he tugs a roll of parchment from the slide of his cloak and opens it.

Dark wings, dark words. Her mother would often say.

But even in her dread she feels a swoop of relief, that Jon isn’t hiding this from her. The wax stamp of the Manderly merman gleams at her, broken. “How terrible is it?”

“Lord Manderly congratulates me on my  _ meteoric rise _ ,” Jon says as she scans the contents. “He is full of congratulations and full of reminders.”

“He wants the South to pay.”

“That’s all these men want,” Jon bowed forward, dropping his temples into his palm. He was a sight, he had not been sleeping, she sumrised. She had not yet overstepped as to investigate his rooms but she was certain it would look as unlived in as she expected. What had she done, forcing him to sleep in her lady-mother’s chambers? Of course he’d have no rest. She bit her lip. 

“They’ve cause to,” Sansa reminded him, rational but distracted.

“Have you spoken to your uncle?”

“Uncle Edmure? He hasn’t written, as a hostage any messages exchanged would be limited and heavily censored,” she bit her lip. Jon’s silence was telling. “We cannot do anything for him right now, I know that, Jon. But you must be careful how you handle these matters, when you speak you must make them want to listen, but also remember that it is your right that they obey. In the Night’s Watch you men were equals, but in the North you cannot let your mercy and good nature be taken advantage of. You were firm with them  today, that was good.”

He raised his head to look at her, marvelling. She wondered if she’d said the wrong thing.

“But I wish next time you’d discuss it with me beforehand, there’s a way to prepare your audience. I know you want the nobles to feel heard, you’re good at that. But sometimes there are sweeter ways to make men follow you. When it comes to the South, they want to hear promises from you, sweeter ones.”

Quickly his softness dissipated. “I won’t pander to their egos or make promises I don’t intend to keep, or promises that are meaningless in an uncertain future.”

“If the future is uncertain and the world it to end,” Sansa reasoned easily, patient. “Then what harm is a promise you cannot keep? Once in a while, it would do you well.”

“Lord Manderly will come,” Jon said. “And take his sweet time doing it. Am I to make him promises?”

“Lord Manderly is generous and slow to forgive. We’ll deal with how to treat with him when the time comes.” Sansa said. “Tell me what’s wrong, Jon. What is it that’s really bothering you?”

If she expected him to tell her everything then she was doubly a fool, but it disappointed her nonetheless when he mentioned nothing of his plans, his going-ons, what Lyn Corbray had said about the dungeons. Jon rubbed his temples, shoulders tight with frustration. “We don’t have enough grain for the North with the snows coming in, let alone enough to go to war.”

“Lord Manderly is - “

“Generous?” Jon laughed mirthlessly. “Is this what is it to be like. I’m to be Littlefinger’s beggar or Lord Manderly’s? To wait for you to sell your mother’s jewels and lose more of your inheritance?”

She felt sorry for him, he was so tired. Even with the sting of betrayal she couldn’t help but worry for him more. He stilled when she placed a hand on his shoulder, she flushed wondering if she’d been too forward with him. She was relearning it all, after all - but he heaved a sigh, his shoulders relaxing, slumping under her hand.

“They keep bringing up the Hornwood estate, the lands of Karstark and Umber - as though they are already in my grasp. The Northeners want rewards for their loyalty, want favours and power, they want me to dole out lands and territories that I do not even have in my possession.”

She rested her head on his back and soothed. “You must sleep, Jon.”

“Why does everyone keep telling me to sleep?”

“Because you need to,” she scolded him gently, he was warm, she could feel his heart beating wildly under her cheek. The strength of his body was a comfort, like laying against Ghost or Lady. She closed her eyes, “You have to rest.” her heart used to beat this fast when she had gone too long without sleep. “Come, let’s go inside. I’ll see you to bed.”

“Will you sing to me too?” he asked, but the sarcasm was soft, muffled.

“Yes.” Sansa found herself saying. “I used to sing to Bran and Rickon, even Arya.”

“I remember.”

How could he?

“I used to hear it in the hallways,” he admitted softly, like it were a guilty secret. Her heart clenched in agony, her eyes welled with tears. “I remember.”

“I’ll sing to you too, then.” she steadied her voice, she could not let him hear it break. She blinked quickly, forcing her eyes to dry. “You’ll sleep like a babe.”

Jon sighed. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I still have duties to attend to,” Jon said. “Ser Davos will have my head if I neglect them.”

“Ser Davos can have you tomorrow.”

“If only…” Jon laughed softly. “I should go.”

“Stay,” Sansa said, “for a little while longer.”

He was silent for a while. She felt him nod against his wrists. The snow was melting through her skirts, and the scroll lay forgotten by her side, but she kept her head on his shoulder and soon felt his breathing slow, his heart too, and knew that he had fallen asleep.

She remained awake by his side, she felt it only right. As though resting he was vulnerable, and as though, strangely, that she guarded him.

 


End file.
